Friday, April 10, 2009

Easter Baskets



This quilt is part of a series I did called "Historic Concepts - Contemporary Systems".
I did kits for this series. My intention here was to make a quilt that resembled a 1930's quilt. I did this before reproduction 30's fabrics were available. I collected and stockpiled fabrics that would give the effect of the 30's fabrics. This was one of the most popular and I don't believe I have any more of these kits available.

What are some of the things I did to give the effect of a 1930's quilt? I used what I call mattress pad quilting for the background and used a medallion type quilting design in some of the plain squares. (If you think you see blue lines where I drew the pattern you are right). I photographed it before I removed the lines so the quilting would show up better in the photo. They were removed quite some time ago and NO they have NOT come back.
I also used a variety of scales, types of prints and values in the prints I chose for the baskets. Even though the baskets are light, there is still a great variety in the value of the fabrics and this makes it a lot more interesting and makes you come back and look at it more than once. I also used a muslin that was not perma-press so when it was washed it would have that slightly wrinkled effect you find in quilts from this era.

In the future I will show you the rest of the series. They all are my interpretations of antique quilts done with fabrics I stockpiled for several years to make the kits. They use today's easy cutting and piecing methods. My sample quilts are all hand quilted. I had people who had never quilted before buy the series one at a time and learned to quilt from them.

I have thought of publishing these as patterns when I run out of the kits. I am not sure if there would be a demand for them.

Tonight I have taken a setion of the thirties Basket quilt to use as a puzzle.
Click to Mix and Solve

2 comments:

Eva said...

A classic! Must give a home feeling to have this on your bed.

Barbara Strobel Lardon said...

Beautiful quilting and I have always been partial to any of the old basket pattern quilts. Lovely!