Monthly Challenge

I have been following along on the yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smallquilttalk/ and love all of Kathy Tracy's books.

I made her March challenge and made her basket quilt. I did however make the blocks a bit smaller at 3" square. I had a place for it to go and that size worked great for me. As you can see it is only the top, I will finish it soon. I have been also been working on my Ribboned Bouquet quilt and in that book by Janice Vaine she has you use a tube turner to make fabric tubes for flowers.


I altered her method by using a different tool to make the handles for the baskets. I was great fun and there were no raw edges for threads to peel out.

Tools

I used a 1 1/4" strip of fabric. Folded it right sides together and sewed a 1/4" seam along the raw edge. I then trimmed very close to the stitching line.

Slid on to tube turner

Close up of point

I then pushed the the entire strip onto the turner and poked the hook through the fabric and closed the hook, this prevents the "hook" from getting caught in the tube as you turn it inside out. Working carefully at the beginning to get it started just right. I found that using that rubber shelf liner helped in turning the tube.

Hold with rubber shelf liner

For my Ribboned Bouquet I needed a strip the width of the fabric cut on the grain. As you can see I was able to turn the entire 42" 

I used this same technique for the bias strips needed for the basket handles. I will say it was easier with both bias and shorter strips but will certainly use this method again. How many times have I needed a narrow piece to applique down and had a difficult time keeping those those thread ends under control.