A Basket Quilt for Easter

I hope everyone has had a nice Easter Sunday. We had a nice program at church by the choir, and then it was my  week to  teach the adult Sunday School  class. After church, I had dinner with my parents.  Now just counting down until the start of a new week. I'm always a bit more tired on the Sundays that I teach. It's only a 40-minute class and I don't stress out about teaching, but it takes energy to keep the lesson organized since you never know what kind of comments or questions will pop up that will derail my nicely planned sequence of teaching. Today was one of those days!

On the quilting front, I finished a quilt top yesterday.

 I've had the fabric for more than a year, and had designed the quilt around the fabric. So it's been on the to-do list for a while. I've been experimenting with different settings and decided to set the blocks as a square-in-square so  I could stitch up as a straight setting (rather than on point -- which can be a pain IMHO). I hope that the secondary star pattern surrounding the corner blocks comes through in the design since that was my intent.

I've developed a new appreciation for negative space in quilts because of the amazing quilting that can be added. Hence the light blue and pink triangles surrounding five of the blocks. I can just imagine some great  quilting in there -- perhaps feathers since this is a fairly traditional quilt.

Don't ya just love basket quilts?

My  HQ18 Avanté longarm machine is now set up in my downstairs family room. I found a throw-away quilt top I never finished and put it on with some ugly fabric as backing. I had fun trying my hand at free-motion quilting, setting tension, basically just getting to know the machine. I've been using up orphan blocks on the same ugly backing (I received a lot of it by mistake from Keepsake Quilting, and they didn't want it back.) I've been doing ruler work and more free-motion to hone my skills. Now I just need to get enough courage to put a real quilt on the frame and do something real. One of these days....

Have a great week!

  

Antique Quilt Trunk Show

What at treat!

Last week at work I had the unexpected pleasure to see a trunk show of about 40 antique quilts.

Sandra Starley,  a nationally certified quilt appraiser, historian, researcher, quilt collector, lecturer, designer and instructor, came by the Handi Quilter offices. Sandy has an extensive collection of antique quilts (early, unusual and masterpieces) and spent a couple hours with us sharing many of her quilts that span  about 100 years -- from early 1800s through early 1900s.

I took lots of photos and will be doing a blog post  on the Handi Quilter blog next week using those photos. But for my post here  I'm linking to  a couple of my favorites from her collection.

This antique crib quilt from about 1845 was just exquisite. Sandra has several posts featuring this quilt, as well as her reproduction  of several of the blocks.

But this was my favorite one from her collection -- an 1850s Rose of Sharon applique quilt.

You'll  love Sandra's  blog, Textile Time Travels. You'll see many close-ups of the quilting and fabrics in her amazing collection of antique quilts.

 

Quilt Border Decisions

I finally have been able to spend  some time in my sewing  room. Not a lot of time, but better than nothing.

So I designed and stitched up this quilt top -- except for attaching the borders.  I can't  decide which way to attach them.

Should I  add the house border with the roofs pointing away from the center? In this layout, the border houses are oriented the same way the center houses are.

Or should  I add them with the roofs pointing towards the center? This is the layout I'm leaning toward. I think the border units look more like houses oriented this way for some reason.

Such a dilemma.

Have a great day!