Finally - My Birthday!!

As some of you know, my stitch group, the Amazing Quilt Babes, celebrate our birthdays throughout the year by making blocks/quilts for each other. We draw our "birthday" date from a hat, then wait impatiently through the year for that Saturday to arrive. Then, the birthday girl makes up the kit for the others to sew on the special day together. Isn't that a great birthday gift? My real birthday is in April, but this year, my Babes birthday was in September.

I started these baskets last year at Gwen's retreat by drawing up the pattern from scratch (thank you Gwen!), and I had made ten of them before I packed them away. Over the last few weeks, I made up the 420 half square triangles that make up the belly of the basket and cut the other 210 triangles for the tops. I packaged each set to make the basket, and prepared the handles (with the ric rac) on the top half of the block. We powered through the day, and voila! All the basket blocks are now done, and I'm working on setting them together. They will have a simple floating border of the background fabric so the baskets can show off. Oh, by the way - each basket has cherry fabric and other fruit fabric in them, along with a piece of fabric that has bugs on it, too! It's going to be called Cheery Cherry Baskets - and I LOVE it!