liberated baskets

Today is not a very happy day for my family. My grandpa passed away this morning and even though we were kind of expecting it, it still made us all very sad. He was the last one of our children's great grandparents alive and what made it even more special was that our son was born on his birthday, they were exactly 77 years apart. He will be missed, but we know he's in a better place.

And, because life goes on, I'm glad that I had planned to show you my liberated baskets quilt today. It's so happy and springy looking, just the opposite of what I've been feeling all day.

The idea for this quilt came from Gwen Marston's book Liberated Quiltmaking 2. Making these baskets was truly "liberated" as I did not have to do any precise measuring or cutting, even the handles did not have to fit perfectly. I used mostly scraps for all the baskets and their backgrounds (always a good thing since my scraps seem to multiply like crazy).

I chose this gorgeous green flowery fabric by Denyse Schmidt for the back of the quilt. I really adore how beautiful and bright it is.

I decided to do straight line quilting using green thread about 3/4" apart. At first I alternated green and red thread for quilting, but that red was just taking away from the whole quilt. So, I went ahead and ripped out all the red. It was a lot of work, but well worth it.

I used Kona coal to bind the quilt - I always like how a darker binding frames the whole quilt. The finished size is 29" x 32", I think it will make for a perfect stroller quilt.

Hope you all have a wonderful rest of the day. Svetlana

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday.