This little quilt is a special treasure. It was made with strategies I don’t normally employ. I bought a charm pack of French General fabric (red is not usually my go-to color), came home and started stitching (I often mull over design plans for quite some time before I start cutting and sewing), I appliquéd baskets in front of tv several evenings until it was done, assembled the top and quilted the project all in about a month.
I had drawn the basket pattern for another project using Granny Zee’s scrap bag. So I pulled out that plastic template, marked a square as the background, another as the basket fabric and started stitching.
As I made baskets, I placed them on the design wall and a color scheme began to emerge. I played with several arrangements, but saw a light to dark progression forming in the background fabrics while the reverse was happening with the baskets. I had always been intrigued by some of Judy Dale’s work where she accomplished that and suddenly, it was happening for me.
A neutral little check worked as alternate blocks and a sweet little quilt was born. Oh, I did add my focus block that I 
love…a basket sitting on one square, its
handle on three others. The handle became a wreath with a perky little red checked bow.
The quilt is named to honor a sweet perky little lady I knew in my childhood. Miss Lily. Here she is pictured beside the love of her life, Mr. Charlie.
Details of quilt: finished size: 25” x 31”, wool batting, free-motion machine quilting. 30-weight polyester thread was used to quilt the vine and leaf motif in each alternate block, echoing that with 50-weight, 2 ply cotton thread
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