The retreat was 4 wonderful days of sewing, chatting and learning from both Gwen & Freddy as well as my fellow classmates. What talent there was! I am a very bad blogger though and forgot my camera on the last day. I missed getting photos of most of other great quilts going up and didn't get a photo of me with Jan or Freddy or Tonye. Ah well, I did better in the solids class which will be posted about soon.
I had decided about a week before the retreat to do a basket quilt. I had a nice collection of bird and bloom prints on light colored fabric and I wanted to highlight them. The light baskets on a dark ground isn't something I'd seen before, but I like the effect. Lots of people commented on the great prints. There are several Japanese designs as well as regular quilt shop fare. There are even a couple of Liberty prints.
I managed to make all these baskets before the retreat started so I was well on my way when I got there. I really wanted to try some of those spikes, so I made a bunch of them, then I thought it needed another color so I started adding in some blues and turquoises. I was lucky to go home every night because I could raid the stash and come back the next morning with more treasures. The handles are hand appliqued (needle turned) by the way. I'm sure someone will ask!
The quilt on the left is by my friend Jan who I mentioned in the last post. She did some great work on the center and then decided to try some baskets on the outer border. We are going to get together next month to share our finished tops. I can't wait to see how hers ends up. Meanwhile, at some point I thought I'd better put the baskets together somehow and work from there. Above you can see the vertical columns of baskets. I also made a few more to fill in, the one on the bottom left and the three minis in the middle right.
Did you also notice how I added the great Kaffe Fassett flower print on the rust background. I love that one and it really brightened up the quilt. Lots of people said they liked the change in scale of the baskets, big to small, short to tall, narrow and wide.
I decided to add the sawtooth and spikes as separating columns. The nine patch border was not fitting in, though I finally decided to put it on the bottom. I also decided to change up the turquoise triangles because they are all the same fabric in the photo above. I haven't done it yet, as you can see below, but I will soon.
Lastly, I made a bunch of shooflies, stars and even a churn dash block. These will go around the sides and top. This top has really come together since I brought it home. I'll have to show another photo of it soon. I added a green inner border that was just the ticket. More later!