204. Basket Weaving

 

In 2020, on a beautiful day at the end of April, we ventured to my cousins' house, Terry and Cathy Oberg, for a photo shoot. We were still fairly new to life under lockdown due to the pandemic. Would it be safe to be around people, even though we were outside? Could we safely use the bathroom in their house before we made the trip home? So many unknowns. But by six weeks into the shutdown, we craved conversation beyond just the two of us. 

 The car is a beauty.  Taking pictures at  Smokin' Possum Farms, Terry and Cathy's house, was the perfect backdrop. And I'll warn you right now, this will be the most picture-heavy post of all the quilts and classic cars because I handed my phone over to Shannon, Terry and Cathy's daughter-in-law, a professional photographer.  And believe me when I tell you that this is just a fraction of the photos that Shannon took. So many that her husband, Travis, decided to just take a rest on the other side of the car. Ha!

So here we go:

The quilt itself, Basket Weaving, was something I have dreamed about for years. A long time ago, I bought yards of a fabric that looked like a woven baskets. At the same time, I began collecting basket blocks, but rather than standard basket blocks, I tried to find unusual blocks. For a long time I couldn't decide what fabric to use for the flowers themselves. I finally settled on prints by Alison Glass as the blocks were so dissimilar so it was nice to have some fairly unifying prints for the flowers.

Pattern: Sunday Best, Quiltworks, 2017

Pattern: Summer Love, Bonnie Olaveson, 2018

Pattern: Flower Basket, Fussycutter Quilt Kits, 2014

Pattern: Cindy's Basket, designed specifically for this quilt by Kerry Gulder @kidgiddy, 2019

Pattern: Ombre' Flower Bouquet, Vanessa Christenson, 2019

Pattern: Piecemeal Quilts, Sandy Walton, 2009

Pattern: Hanging Baskets, Sandee Wachal, McCall's Quilting, 2005

Pattern: Sunday Best, Quiltworks, 2017

Pattern: VIVA! My Friends, Fusako Nakamura, QNM, 2003. I almost didn't make this one because of the hand appliqued handle, but I'm so glad I included it.

Pattern: Piecemeal Quilts, Sandy Walton, 2010

I paid no attention to the size of the blocks, but then realized several were quite small compared to the larger blocks. I didn't want them to get lost, so I chose to add some pieced segments.

Pattern: Prairie Star Basket, Judy Martin, 1998

Pattern: Pinwheel Basket (found on Instagram, designer unknown)

Pattern: Quilty Basket, Julie Sanders, Quiltmaker, 2015

Pattern: Cathedral Window, Barbara Campbell, QNM 2010

The quilting was a gorgeous design that has a custom feel to it, done by Darby of @quiltedsquid.

One afternoon,I took it to Tagua, a local fair trade shop that supports artisans in developing countries by selling their handmade crafts. They had a display of beautiful baskets.

It was fun trying to match the baskets with the quilt blocks.

Pattern: Seminole Basket, Karen Boswell, QNM, 1991

I'm so glad that my collection of basket block patterns finally became a sampler quilt, one that I really love.

Title: Basket Weaving

Designed by: Me

Date Completed: 2019

Size: 66" x 90"

Quilted by: Darby Myers

203. Finding the Way to My Heart

 

 Unlike a lot of my other quilts, Finding the Way to My Heart has not been photographed in multiple locations. I'm not quite sure why that is, because it holds a special place in my heart, and thus the name. 

So while photographs are relatively few, there definitely is a back story to this quilt.

I have long been a fan of Kelly Liddle of @jeliquilts. I had also wanted to make a two-color quilt for a long time. The thing about two-color quilts, for me there is a high boredom factor. I think I could do it if I chose a scrappy version because the variety of prints would keep me interested. In this case, because I wanted to use solid red, I needed to have a variety of block styles. 

I do not profess to be a pattern writer. I don't know how to use pattern-designing programs like EQ8. Most of the time I get out a sheet of graph paper and my colored pencils. However, in this case...I had an idea in my head and this was the only "pattern" I followed. 

My idea was envisioning a kind of maze where a metal ball was dropped into a maze in the upper left-hand corner.

 It followed the arrows to the right, went round and round here,

and here it dropped down to the middle row

 and went through the round mazes toward the left.

Oops. Going in the wrong direction.

Then it dropped down to the bottom row and followed the arrows to the right, up and around the heart, dropping out of the bottom in the lower right-hand corner. I don't even know if it makes any sense if you read that, but it made sense to me at the time.

I had to modify most of Kelly's blocks a little bit, and did so with her permission. Sometimes I used only part of a particular pattern, and sometimes I had to change the direction. My goal was to get it completed in time to enter it into QuiltCon 2019 in the Two-Color Quilt category. 

When I made the heart, I realized it was too small. I had to enlarge the pattern and make it again!

My friend, Carrie Hanson of @gotchacoveredquilting, had agreed to do the custom quilting. She had just received the quilt when I received the news that I had been diagnosed with breast cancer, in November 2018. After giving the news to my family, Carrie was one of the first people I contacted. The reason? She is a breast cancer survivor herself. She knew exactly the range of emotions I was going through. We both firmly believe that she had the quilt in her hands at the time I was diagnosed for a reason. She quilted so much love into this quilt. I still feel her care and concern each time I hold it.

And what a beautiful job she did! It was like she could read my mind. Because there was so much negative space, she was able to add a lot of "ghost" triangles.

When I finally decided to go ahead with the calendar, I knew this red and white quilt was destined for July. Friends Brian and Sandy Cetti own a beautiful classic Shelby Cobra Replica, and the quilt and the car seemed made for one another.

It was so much fun photographing this quilt. We also had the cutest photo bomber. 

Wondering if it was accepted into QuiltCon? No, it was not. And it also was not accepted into another quilt show I entered. But that's okay. That does not diminish at all how special this quilt is to me.

However, it was accepted into Best of the Valley 2019 and received a Third Place ribbon.

Quilt Name: Finding the Way to My Heart

Designed by: Cindy Wiens (using modified patterns by Kelly Liddle of @jeliquilts)

Size: 60" x 60"

Quilted by: Carrie Hanson