100 Baskets

At last I have finished the baskets. Starting this quilt so many weeks ago, in early July, I had no idea that I would be so slow at finishing them, and I really dragged through those middle ones - the 40s, the 50s, the 60s - they took forever. As I neared 75, the end finally seemed attainable, and I plodded on. At 85 or so, I realized that I did not have enough parts cut out, so that slowed me further.

This afternoon, I stitched #s 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99 and 100. Whew!

Here's a couple of pictures marking the milestone. They are stacked in piles of 10. At first, I had them in a certain order, as there are 3 variations of baskets, but now they are mostly randomly stacked.

I have some decisions to make before moving on to sashing these baskets into rows. First, I have very little of the white background fabric remaining, so what to do?

One option is to take my bit of white and shop for more, hoping that I can find something to match.

Another option is to sash with some of my Roman Holiday jelly rolls. I have a full jelly roll and a half of another one. The pattern calls for very narrow sashing - 1.25 inches. So I could cut the jelly roll strips in half. Easy to do, and I know I'd have plenty. But the pattern calls for using the neutral; will I be happy with colorful sashing? Since it's RH, probably.

A third option is to dig into my stash of whites and off-whites to see if something I already own would suitably substitute. I will probably dig around later today to see what I can find.

Are you wondering about the occasional printed neutral? I began this quilt using my Roman Holiday scraps from an earlier project and a more recent Etsy-purchased charm pack. If I did not use the lights from the charm pack, what else would I do with them? A lot of light bits with no darker colors would be a senseless waste of Roman Holiday! So I decided that they could be used in the basket HSTs and would show up randomly throughout the baskets and, ultimately, all around the quilt.

I have not had a particularly regular presence here in blog-land, but believe me, I have been stitching. And now that I have at last finished the baskets, perhaps I can show you some variety in my content. Variety has been totally absent while making these 100 baskets. Gosh, I'm glad to have them done!

Happy Quilting, Friends!