Getting Caught Up On the Big Basket Series

Gather Ye Roses is the first finish of the year! Yay! This quilt is the first in my big basket series, but somehow the last to be a true blue finish. For some reason, I was intimidated at the thought of quilting all that 'blank' cream space around the basket. After stitching on the other two though, then it all felt so much easier. Amazingly enough, procrastination does occasionally pay off...

These quilting lines are 'eyeballed', not carefully
measured out for accuracy and precision....

And though I liked this quilt, it had become the least favorite of the three. Why in the world? It looks ever so better with the hand quilting than it did as a quilt top! Not sure why that continues to be a problem for me after so many years, under-appreciating the effect that quilting texture can just generally bring to the table. A quilt top can look so well..., lifeless before the quilting. There's just no comparison and really, no possible way to imagine the entirety of the final results.

Gather Ye Rosebuds the first finish of 2020!
Big Basket #1

The whiter areas of the basket handle continue to amuse me. Should there have been an extra stitch or two down the middle of the basket handle in order to dull all that brighter area? I decided not to, time and again. Second guessing just gets tiresome. I decided that it makes for an extra interesting element, having the basket handle fade in and out of the background. In years to come, it will no doubt become another one of those 'what-was-the-quilter-thinking?' questions we all love to ponder.

Gather Ye Roses. Or whatever else flower you might love...

I quickly figured out that making large baskets for a centerpiece would create all sorts of problems in the border areas. Proportion, proportion, proportion! I emphatically did not want these quilts to all be king sized! In the first quilt, I kept to a simple, much smaller basket block repeat on two sides. The purposeful asymmetrical look resulted from adding 1. a different color border on two sides, 2. a larger border width on those two sides, 3. a distinctively different design application in the break from blocks to applique vines. Easy peasy, but yes, involving a lot of different design decisions.  Should do this more often. Love, love a good asymmetrical border application....

A few little flowers in the baskets...

Working with an asymmetrical design idea also totally ended the dilemma of what to do about a long gawky basket surrounded by too-narrow borders. Which just made the basket look even more awkward and weird. So what to do? More borders? One fabric add ons? Ugghh.. I just wanted it to look interesting and somehow maximize the effect of the super large basket. Seriously though, all along I was hinging the entire success of the quilt on the hope that the final quilting stitching would create important depth and texture there in the centerpiece. So, so happy when that came to fruition....

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but all the brown in the applique area is made up of several different brown fabrics. Very subtle difference, but something that I find much more compelling than using all the same fabric. From a distance, the change from medium to darker brown creates depth and movement in the quilt, and close up, it just gives it that utility 'make-do look'. In my opinion, that adds to the sneaky charm of this quilt, the overall coziness, not having everything come off as matchy-matchy.

Possible rosebuds on the vine?

Of course, the fact that I didn't actually have enough brown fabric in any one piece of yardage helped make those decisions come about more easily. However, if it was a truly awful idea {after carefully auditioning whatever there was available from the stash}, I do know where the fabric store is. Rare though it may be, I have taken that option once or twice before in my life! How much more rewarding {for me, can't speak for you!} to find a good use for fabrics languishing away in the stash totes. 

Mixing several different blendy-type, printed fabrics that have a similar color feel to them is a puzzle, but being able to totally use them up and maybe even have to search out more feels great. I love it! I mean, it's not like you'd actually consciously build a quilt around these fabrics, right? Ahem, yeah. Quick disclaimer, I might actually starting to do this very thing, just for fun? lol  For example though,  the brown fabric with the tiny white flower on the corner of the quilt was a 90's look print that I had been trying to use up for years. Why toss the idea of finally getting to use it, when it's an absolutely perfect match for this particular quilt? Oh, there's obviously not enough, bummer. Guess we'll give that idea up. No! Find some fabrics that play reasonably well with that one wonderful print  and make it work. 

Nothing helps out a red, white a blue quilt better
than the perfect amount of brown...

The sweetest thing about this quilt might be the words with the red flowers nearby. Not all the flowers are rosebuds of course, but the sentiment still makes me happy. Words to live by! The binding is several random lengths from the leftovers binding tote and a couple other scrappy pieces of red fabric that blended well. So easy to go scrappy on a quilt like this. Although it never really, truly reduces the sheer amount of leftover binding lengths does it?  Not in the long run. No matter how much I kid myself, there always seems to be just a little bit leftover to dump straight back into the tote.*sigh  Maybe it's like sourdough starter....

That soft, striped homespun was a bear to work with
but looks so good in the background position!

So there you go. That's the sum total of the Big Basket Series {thus far}. Gather Ye Rosebuds was the first Big Basket in the series to be a completed quilt top, but the last one totally finished up. Improv. Woven Basket, below, was the second quilt top and the first one totally finished up.

Improv. Woven Basket, Big Basket #2

Big Tipsy Basket was the third in the series and the second one to be completely quilted. It's interesting to see the overall comparison at a quick glance. The first quilt was started in 2016 on an impulse {really had no idea that I even wanted to make big baskets}, and that quickly led to the idea of series work. Kind of impossible to stop at one! There was supposed to be a fourth quilt, but somehow that particular idea never got off the ground floor. 

Big Tipsy Basket, Big Basket #3

Never say never! When Jolene shared her beautiful Tribute To Gwen Marston basket quilt earlier this year, it definitely got me thinking again. Hmm... Maybe. Maybe? I might just one more big basket quilt in me. Or two. The series is only over when I say it is.....

The Floating Squares Quilt and A Roundabout Way of Getting Inspired

I've been in a little bit of a funky, funk lately. Summer blues? Who really knows, but the fact is, while I'm piddling away on all my many applique projects (which I still love), I'm a bit bored. And lethargic. So I'm taking a kind of side step in the hopes of challenging my brain to wake up, not that I'm giving up the applique projects. Heaven forbid!

My Quilty Chaos quilt

A lot of little things led to this idea of mine. It usually works that way with me. Sort of a trickle down, pile it up effect. First of all, the quilt above. While we were having a boat load of company a couple weekends ago, my oldest daughter dug out this quilt and piled it on top of the little nest she makes whenever her bedroom's been taken over by our guests. It's one I worked on over a year ago for Sherri Lynn Wood's Improv. Handbook as one of the test quilters. I graded it as a big fat fail at the time, but now I'm starting to see things to actually like about it. Things that might help me get somewhere in that never ending 'personal style' quest that I seem to be on all the time.

I did buy Sherri's book recently, but I can't seem to read it. My brain kind of freezes at all the design terminology and says 'Hey! NOT imputing up here!' Anne talked recently about studying this book, working her way through the scores, {such a great idea} and then made a fun version of this same floating squares score. In an email conversation, she mentioned Stephie's version and of course I had to go take a look at that too. Wowsers, I do so admire their courage with fabric and color! Also, thanks to Lynne, I've had this interesting idea of making single color quilts from fabric that's languishing way deep in the stash. It may not be our favorite fabric today, but it's definitely worth hacking into, right? And I do so adore a frugal make-do sort of quilt.....

The first units

Oh yeah. So with all that tumbling through my busy, summer-drained, but mildly interested brain, I decided to revisit this particular experiment. Why did I think it was a fail exactly? Because there are definitely elements of this quilt that I rather like, in spite of everything I don't! Okay. For starters, the process was, to put it bluntly, quite terrifying to me. With a capital T. Very un-orderly with absolutely no clear vision of the end result. I'm not always a big fan, no matter how adventuresome you might think I am. It felt like white-knuckled winter driving to me.

Putting them together into blocks and auditioning other fabrics

I literally had to push, prod and make myself get through the process. Friends, it wasn't the least bit fun until I finally had a kind of breakthrough, allowing myself to set a few boundaries, cheat on a couple of the 'limits' and finally decide on a finishing-up plan. How improv. is that?

Settling on a design layout and where the block overlap should be....

I admit to loving the learning how to sew gentle curves and getting the chunky, funky blocks together into something less than straight line rows. That was the very best part. Because I am soooo lame. And why did I put the improv. units into blocks anyway? That still bothers me even though it's probably my default  position and the only way I could get through what felt like absolute chaos.

Learning how to cut and sew gentle curves...

But who cares if they're being lame when something starts getting fun? Just take a rotary cutter and roll it through both layers in a gentle motion, going in where the blocks go in and trying to be very organic about it all. Sew it together slowly and bingo! We've got curves! Something to store away in that bag of quilting skills we pack around. Try as I may, I had never quite got the hang of it before....

Playing with exactly where the curve should be....

I used my entire design wall and a little extra, trying to make sure the quilt was always laying flat, flat, flat. Honestly, it was the first time I was almost bitter about not having a real, honest-to-goodness sized design wall!

Starting to sew the quilt top together....

I sewed up those short, 4-block rows into a big square and then added on the others sides until Ta-da! A quilt top with raggedy edges. Which I didn't know what to do with AT ALL. Why chop off all the edges into perfectly straight cornered quilt with so much quilty chaos going on inside? I didn't want my quilt to hang completely wonky and look unkempt. {Remember, I generally make fairly traditional looking quilts and this was painful to see.}

This was another frightening moment, with me actually perspiring and getting a headache, until I made the decision to add on a solid border. Just cage it all in. {Refer to the first picture in the post.} Which again, sort of defeats the idea of WooHoo! Look at me, I'm sewing Improv. style! But it really did help me so very much to come to terms with getting an actual finish in. That felt huge even though I was pretty sure Sherri would not approve. I quickly forgave myself for imagined shortcomings and made the deadline, knowing it would never be chosen for the book.*sigh

One big quilt top, minus the border that hopped on...

It's so hard to learn new things--the anxiety, fear, almost physical drag that we feel on our body in making the attempt. Stepping out into the unknown and pushing through.*whew  I felt pretty wrung out and yes, a bit exhilarated too, believe it or not. Because I did finish. I pushed through something that felt nearly impossible for my very structured, creatively challenged brain to absorb and comprehend.

Then I left it alone except for some of that gentle curve stuff. Such a good feeling to have a good, solid grasp on that particular process at least!

My first hunt for long forgotten greens....

And now I'm thinking about doing my own sort of series, which I always find challenging and interesting no matter how appalling my fabric choices. I'm going to start out with Score #1 in 'The Improv. Handbook for Modern Quilters: A Guide to Creating, Quilting, and Living Courageously'. haha  Except for the word 'Modern', the title could have been written for me. And yes, that's the Floating Squares score. Again. Only this time done in greens from the very bottom of the big green tote. {Some of these lovelies have probably been in there since the late 90's in case you were wondering.}

Adding a bit of spark....

Maybe a bit more of the sparky greens to help? Yep, that already appears more lively even though it's utterly safe and bland looking. It's feels like a very comfortable starting point, just saying. And I need to get started. There's been something nagging away at me lately that makes me feel like this experimentation is very necessary for my continued growth as a quilter. Does that make sense? Truly, I feel better already just for having a plan to purposely hack away at some fabric. Especially because none of it's important enough to make me cry if perchance it gets ruined in the process! And don't worry. I'll play with the good stuff at a later date. A big thanks to everyone who helped inspire me in this series as it already feels fun and not nearly as scary-hairy as the last go-round. *Nobody paid me to try and persuade you to buy this book....