I'll post more often now, showing some of the new projects I've been making. In the meantime, I'm going to post a story I wrote for The Quilter magazine last year. Readers of that magazine have asked me if I have a photo of the quilt I was writing about: here it is. The article starts below the photo.
It all goes back to the quilt I started when my eldest daughter went off to university. I decided to make her a basket quilt — each basket containing something pertinent to her life. Here is a photo of Alysson's Baskets:
Before her departure, I let Emily loose in my stash so she could pick some fabrics. She is a scientist, specialising in plants, so she chose fruit, flowers, insects, butterflies, trees—it’s incredible how fabric manufacturers cater to almost every whim.
I progressed at a steady pace and when the baskets were ready to be joined Emily and I went shopping at Lady Sew & Sew in Henley to pick out fabric for the sashing, borders and back. She found a birch tree fabric for the sashing and borders. Then we looked for fabric for the back. She fell in love with a number of fruit fabrics so I told her to choose one. “Mom,” she said, “I like them all! How about a Log Cabin back?” This girl knows her quilt patterns, and knows her mother can’t say no. Reader, I bought a metre of each and began sewing. The quilt was already heavy with the patchwork on the front, and I thought that if I made a normal Log Cabin on the back we wouldn’t be able to lift it. So I made huge Log Cabins that really showed off the fabrics. But this did entail a lot more sewing, when I thought I’d only be doing a simple seam! Here's the quilt back. (It sort of looks like a Modern Quilt, doesn't it?)
Finally, the time was right to quilt, so I began. My machine quilting is always rusty at first, so I quilted the easy blocks where it wouldn’t be noticed, outlining leaves and shapes in matching threads (I love when the quilt back is a crazy melange of colour and pattern).
