Imogene’s Baskets

I had the pleasure of taking a class and then seeing a presentation of quilts from Arlene Arnold. I’ll start with the class and the quilt I am making.

Not great photo, I was sitting in the back. Arlene shared some of her quilt collection of quilts from the 20s-50s, these are all made with seed sack, or flour sack fabrics. I’ll talk about that in another post. This was probably made in the 40s’ when the fabrics get brighter again. Notice the double flying geese around the border.

Arlene is in the middle, the rest of us class mates are showing our work. The project was Lucretias’ journey. Kim finished the whole top during the class. I had finished mine last year when the class was canceled. Which is why I chose a different pattern for the class

I brought some fabric I had bought at the infamous sale I went to two years ago. This was a quilt kit from The French General. I didn’t like the pattern at all, very basic and boring – so I’m thrilled to use it here. You are seeing plenty of flying geese, which are not easy to make accurately. I have rulers for this, Arlene recommended getting the lock bloc ruler. In this case one needs to buy a separate ruler for every size of geese. I ended up buying two, this size and a smaller size for another pattern I bought. Guess what, this is the best method.

In designing the quilt, Arlene made the blocks larger as well as used only four baskets – so the quilt is smaller.

sort of out of order, I finished these three baskets in class. I hadn’t made baskets in a very long time, once again, nowadays designers figure out out to strip piece the blocks.

At this point I am adding the border, and I realize that the final size might be ok for a baby quilt, but it’s not practical otherwise. With quilts, I want practicality. I like using my quilts, and yes, I’m keeping this one.

So I made two more baskets, which means that I might not have enough of the background fabric.

With the bloc lock ruler making the flying geese is like popcorn, I simply can’t stop. Instead of using the background for the corners, I used one of the prints.