Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt - progress #1 * On Pens & Needles

Looking back at the post regarding the pieced basket blocks, I realized that I hadn’t included the picture of the original column. That has now been corrected and it is included above the typed text.

I have been unable to get the Grandma’s Flower Basket Quilt column to print out in original size. I couldn’t just cut the patterns out and use them. A good deal of the pieces could be created by following the text description.

The text stated that the white fabric should be “Peter Pan gingham”. According to the inter-webs, this is a white-on-white gingham.

“For a 90 x 90 inch quilt, 15 yds of 36 inches wide fabric would be needed for both the front and back. (for 72″ x 90″, 10 yds)”. I found 8 yds of 40″ wide on Fabric.com and ordered all they had at the time. I could always use a different fabric for the back of the quilt.

1-1/2 yds of Buff or green fabric were needed for the pieced baskets. I went with the buff. While at Grandma’s Attic Sewing Emporium I purchased American Made Brand fabrics, Light Camel for the baskets (stand in for “buff”), and two greens (mint and Emerald) for the leaves and stems. All of the fabrics were washed in HOT water and ironed before cutting.

This quilt was to be made up of 20 pieced & flower blocks, 20 white square blocks and 20 white triangular blocks. The full sized white blocks measure 10.5″x10.5″, I cut 20 of these.

For the needed 40 white triangles, I cut an additional 20 white 10.5″ x 10.5″ blocks, then cut them in half on the diagonal.

The instructions stated that the small triangles (pattern pieces #1) were 2.25″ x 2.25″ squares that were then to be cut on the diagonal. 9 white and 11 buff triangles would be needed for each pieced basket. Multiplying those numbers by the number of pieced basket blocks, the totals came to 180 white and 220 buff. This meant that I needed 90 white and 110 buff 2.25″ x 2.25″ squares. I did not cut them on the diagonal right away, because I was planning to make half-square-triangle blocks with some.

So far, so good (That was the easy part). Remember that I mentioned that I had been unsuccessful in printing out the pattern at it’s original full size? This presented a problem when it came to the slightly larger small triangle (pattern piece #3) and the rectangle (pattern piece #2). No measurements were given for these pieces. Through trial and error (and plenty of seams ripped and re-sewn) I came up with measurements (just in case you are making this along with me).

(#2) Rectangle – ( 5.25″×2″) 2 needed for each pieced basket block.
(#3) Triangle – cut 4″x4″ block, then cut it on the diagonal to get the triangle. One needed for each pieced basket block.

Referring to the illustration of the pieced block I could see that each basket was made of 5 half-square-triangle blocks of buff/white and one half-square-triangle block of white/white.