Layer Cake Basket Quilt

First, before I say anything else - man, is it actually December 1st? Wow. OK, now down to business!

This is a not very good picture of the basket quilt I was making between steps of the Quiltville mystery to occupy my time. So much for that plan! It's almost done and part 3 of the mystery isn't posted yet! This quilt is ready to have its edges trimmed and borders applied. I generally don't like quilt patterns where you trim the edges straight after you assemble the center, but this time I did as they said. The edge will be trimmed through the corners of the end squares, making triangles where they join the first narrow border, which will be red. The wider outer border will be the brown paisley in the sashing. That fabric is on the way in the mails somewhere.

I even liked making the sashing scrappy. I started to wait for the fabric on order, but after I auditioned the different brown pieces in amongst the brown paisley, I liked the carefree quality of the look.

This quilt used 35 pieces of a 42 piece Moda Layer Cake and a matching fat quarter. The remaining 7 pieces and two more fat quarters will go into the backing somehow (I feel a stripe coming on!). It probably will be one of my now-trademark off-center pieced stripes. They give you such a nice frame for the label and make the back interesting. That's a habit I'm glad I picked up this year.

Now I have to pick a name for this quilt. The fabric collection is called Simple Abundance, and the pattern is called Aunt Lucy's Baskets by the designer, Ari Dolinger. I was thinking of calling it Simple Gifts, because it was pieced over Thanksgiving weekend and reminded me of taking baskets of food to those less fortunate during the holidays.

Quiltville's Carolina Christmas mystery is on!

Around 11 p.m. I staggered out of the kitchen after washing the last of the pots and pans. I checked my email before heading for bed to see if I had anything from the family, and there in my inbox was the announcement for part one of Quiltville's new mystery. Well, of course I had to go look at it and print it out, but I was much too tired to do more.

This morning after a quick trip to the post office (that's as far as I was willing to go on Black Friday - luckily it's not near the mall) I started reading the directions. She's given us plenty to work on in the first installment - and, blessedly, no square in a squares! I had to press everything and make a final decision on my neutrals before I could cut, so that gave me one more chance to ponder the color choices.

I pulled out most of the darker neutrals so they would contrast better with all shades of gold but left a few darker tans for interest. I like the selection of golds of all shades and intensities that I'm substituting for the greens, and the good variety of blues which sub for the reds. Instead of the single gold she's using to tie it together I'm using this pretty coral-y orange. I'm happy the colors play well together and have a lot of interest. Now, the only concern is - am I substituting the right colors? It's always a concern when you don't use the colors the mystery designer used. Since you don't have the end result at hand, you can't mock up a block or two in EQ to see how it looks before you cut. I think I'm doing the right thing using gold for green and blue for red, but I can't really be sure until I'm too committed to make changes. This is hard stuff for a control freak.

Well, I've given my back a rest after that stint at the ironing board, so it's time to start cutting!

Oh, by the way, check out the Oct/Nov issue of Quilter's Newsletter (which I JUST RECEIVED - what's up with that?) for a wonderful small basket pattern quilt made from a Moda Layer Cake. Now I just happened to have a layer cake - Moda's Simple Abundance - that wasn't committed to any project so I decided to try it. It's one of those patterns where you sew together patches and then cut to size, and I normally dislike that method, but for this I'll give it a shot. I basted and appliqued basket handles yesterday while the turkey was cooking. I finished all the basting to the freezer paper shapes, but only appliqued 4 out of 12. But I've got a start on it for when I can get back after the mystery.