A Bevy of Baskets

Our patchwork group is working on basket blocks this year, one block a month.  The first is Basket of Fruit.

I starting a basket quilt in May last year.  It spent some time in a box on the shelf, as projects do, but it came out at the start of the year and it's progressing well.

I am working on a pieced sashing between the baskets.  The outer border is going to be flying geese.  I need about 120 flying geese blocks and I have 50 so far.

The Malaga quilt has a basket of flowers block.  It has been made with a yellow background instead of white and there are no duplicates in the floral prints.

Basket of flowers is a 5 x 5 block, so my 10 inch finished size was just right.  The pattern is 713 in BlockBase.

The signature on the block is Mrs. Rudberg.  Edna Rudberg was 50 in 1937, a farmer's wife with two children.  Her life was looking very ordinary until I found a new record.  At the age of 85 Edna married for a second time to a 91 year old widowed Russian immigrant Jewish bookbinder. Now that sounds like a story!

Fruit Basket Beginnings

On Mother's Day I was fortunate enough to visit one of my favourite spots.

Mitchell River, Bairnsdale, Victoria

 I happened to have my Mother's Day present with me (as one does).

I saw these fabrics from Blue Hill Fabrics Pomegranate range at the Australian Quilt Convention. I bought them from The Quilted Crow and had a very nice conversation as well. The bundle was a bit outside of my budget so I declared them to be my Mother's Day present.

While I was waiting for Mother's Day to come I thought about how I would use them.  I like Dear Jane and The Farmer's Wife  but I didn't want to make the same quilts as everyone else.  I though that a basket block would suit the colours.  I was going to use one pattern and make each block in a different colourway; then decided a collection of different basket blocks would be far more fun.  And seeing as Pomegranate is a fruit I chose Fruit Basket as my first block.

My finished block, hot off the press, is a little smaller than my intended 6 inch finished.  I had some difficulty dividing a six inch block into five by five pieces even with EQ7. 

Fruit Basket is a pattern in Ruby McKim's 101 Patchwork Patterns (1931).  She has suggested piecing it all in small squares and half triangles, I think that would have caused even more grief.

This fruit basket quilt was on eBay, I like the way the baskets spin around the (almost) centre.

The Mitchell River isn't the only picturesque place in Bairnsdale.  I visited the Courthouse too.  Inspiration can come from anywhere!