Basket Weave Quilt
I had a nice surprise at my quilt guild meeting when it was our 30th anniversary year, which brought extra treats and celebrations. Each month a member prize was given to a person chosen by a random drawing. If that person was wearing his or her special anniversary T-shirt, he or she was able to accept the prize. Yes, we all dressed alike for the whole year. One month I was the lucky winner. That was the first surprise. The second surprise was that I won something of which I hadn’t any knowledge. My gift bag contained a roll of colorful quilting fabric from Moda. Of course, I know Moda fabrics. What was unusual, to me, was that the width of fabric pieces were 5 inches. I’ve seen plenty of jelly rolls, that are 2.5” wide, and honeybuns, which are 1.5” wide, or similar products marketed under different monikers. I’d never seen a roll that was 5” wide. I had to Google what I was looking at to learn about this thing.
The tag said that the line was designed by Me and My Sister. I learned that the line, “Ticklish” went on the market in 2013. I wondered if this width pre-cut was something done back then and that the practice might not have taken off as well as the more narrow widths I often find. I found a very helpful website that explained the various types of precuts, which told me that this 5” roll is called a “dessert roll”. I unrolled the package to find that the strips are like the other pre-cuts, by width of fabric. There were twenty different fabrics. That struck me as a little unusual also, that a line would have twenty designs. I might expect ten or twelve. More than that seems like an awful lot to expect from a designer.
I did not immediately know what to do with these 5” strips. Initially, before I removed the ribbon tie and unrolled them, I thought they might be jolly bars, which are 5” x 10” pieces. I went to Pinterest to search for jolly bar quilt patterns. I landed on a pattern that looked somewhat like a basket weave, with the two long sides of the jolly bar flanked by a 2.5” strip. This creates blocks that, if set in alternating orientation between the jolly bar between horizontal and vertical position, a basket weave look is created. This style quilt looked pretty simple and quick, which is what I needed.
I had lots of Kona white so I decided to cut several 2.5 inch strips by width of fabric, and sew them on each side of the Moda 5” strips. This gave me strips that were 9” wide, from which I cut four 9” blocks and had a leftover piece that was approximately 5”. I will decide later what to do with this extra piece. I used the 9” blocks (8.5” finished) to make the basket weave style quilt. As I was noodling this project I thought that if I could get 4 blocks from each strip, and there are 20 strips, I should have 80 blocks. I wondered if I should set aside 8 and use 72 so that I can have a quilt with eight blocks across, and nine down. I ended up deciding that I wanted a quilt that was 9 blocks up and down and 10 blocks across. I wanted to make sure that this would fit a full size bed, but maybe my queen bed also. For that purpose I needed to pick up a couple more fat quarters of coordinating fabrics to get the number of blocks that I needed. I purchased three fat quarters. I ended up putting another 2.5” Kona white border all the way around and it’s very generous for a full size, but not overpowering.
I had a couple of reasons for wanting to quickly turn this prize into a quilt top. I wanted a summer quilt for my own use, and, more importantly, I wanted another chance to stitch something on the long arm. I have been learning to use a Gammill long arm at my local quilt shop. My skill has been building over the past couple of years. I do work on donation quilt tops created by my guild members. This is great practice. However, I was ready for a larger quilt. I was pleased with my effort this time. My goal on this quilt was to practice making swirls. I wanted the points to be pointy, and the overall design to be evenly weighted. I think I did rather well. Technically speaking, I felt pretty good about this quilt. You might think that with such a simple design it would be a simple quilt. However, if you are like me and want to challenge yourself to develop better skills, your goal is to have your rows of blocks connect with perfect intersections, and have a nice, square quilt that loads on the long arm without struggle, or getting wonky. The intersections of all but one of the 90 blocks met up perfectly, and on the long arm when I locked the machine into position to run a vertical stitch down the side of the quilt, the edge was perfectly even. I was so pleased that a little voice inside me yelled, “yaaaaay!” There have been times with other quilts when that little voice in my head was yelling bad words. Fortunately, not this time.
Even if you are someone who is trying to develop your skills to a more advanced technical level, sometimes it’s fun to make a simple quilt. Let the fabric be the star and just enjoy it. I’m happy that I won this sweet dessert roll from Me and My Sister because I am thrilled to have a new and cheery summer quilt.