The Basket Sampler and a moon peek!

I began this post on Wednesday morning fresh from the observing the lunar eclipse and then life interrupted -- you know how that goes I'm sure.  So did you see the eclipse?  It was my first time ever!  Since the sky was clear at 11 p.m.,  I checked before I went to bed to see what the time it would occur in Northeast Ohio and on a whim set my alarm for 5:45 a.m. figuring that it would be cloudy as usual and I'd go back to bed.

To my great delight, the sky was clear and I could see the eclipse beginning from the front porch.   So my daughter and I pulled up  wicker chairs and watched for 45 minutes until the moon moved below the tree line.  I took the pictures with a Panasonic Lumix (point and shoot) at 30X zoom, hand held and left the rest of the settings up to the camera.

The moon is much redder in the pictures than it was to the naked eye but I see why it's called the blood moon!  It reached full eclipse before it slipped below the tree line so we didn't see the end but I'm pretty thrilled to have seen so much of it so clearly!! 

Back to quilting!!  Here is a beauty shot of my Basket Sampler that I shared with you in a couple posts last week.  I'm delighted to have this quilt finished!  It was displayed in the Streetsboro Quilt Show over the weekend and received a red ribbon -- that was something of a surprise to me since I had several issues during the finishing process but I just pressed onward!!  It was one of those times when I just try to learn from my mistakes and keep on moving.  Next time I'll do better.

Here's a close-up of one of the blocks and the surrounding sashing so you can see what creates those terrific stars!  I did that with Marti Michell's Long Skinny Stars Sashing set. 

It's a two-piece set that enables you lots of flexibility -- you can work with 2" to 4" finished sashing and the length is flexible as well.  The set comes with a detailed instruction booklet that also discusses several other ways to use the tools.  The tips of the "star points" are trimmed during the cutting process allowing you to position them easily for perfect points! 

This is the best picture I could get of the entire quilt -- can you see how the placement of the baskets achieved balance in the quilt?  And the outer sashing pieces only have the star points on one end which emphasizes the stars since there are no stray points along the outer edges.

I used Marti Michell's Template Set M to cut the thirteen 5-patch 12" blocks and the patterns can be found in her Encyclopedia of Patchwork Blocks, Volume 4 (pages 36 - 39).  This is my favorite block because it's so "scrappy".  And you can see one of the problems -- that dark brown fabric bled during the blocking process.  (Grrrr . . . . )

I've written a guide sheet for cutting and laying out this quilt and I'm happy to share it with you -- just e-mail me at maryhueyquilts at hotmail dot com. It includes yardage needed for this version (it's a 78" square quilt), a layout guide, and cutting instructions for the setting (sashing with points and setting triangles).  There is also a layout included for a larger quilt (78" by 99") but I haven't done the math for that one.

The setting will work with any group of blocks, not just baskets, and it can also be rescaled for other sizes blocks using the instructions in the booklet included with the sashing tool set.

And as always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me!!

Off to a retreat for the weekend with a (typically optimistic) pile of UFQ's and I hope to come home with some finished pieces and significant progress on the rest!!

Hope you have a stitching weekend!!

Mary Huey

https://maryhueyquilts/blogspot.com