Tales of the Prairie Basket

Sad Little Prairie Basket

This Prairie Basket wall hanging quilt has a long, sorted story. I started it when I first started quilting early on in Jo’s Little Women Club. Making those tiny, tiny (1” finished) little 20 Patches did not go well for me. You will see from my less than perfect alignment, it was a huge challenge not completely met by me. The center appliqué was relatively easy compared to the blocks. When I put it together, it was truly awful, so I just shoved it in an unfinished stuff pile and forgot it for several years.

When I came across it again four years later, I decided I would unsew each 20-Patch block from one another, try to square them up, and put it back together again. They were squared but not evenly. The little blocks on each of the four sides really got chopped off but I was bound and determined to use them no matter what.

After all the trouble I had and it's less than stellar appearance, my
inclination was to leave off the pointed border from the pattern(more work than it was worth on this project) and just put on a plain outer border. Well, I quilted it on my machine in an uneven grid pattern except for the outlining around the appliquéd
section (my first outline quilting). The quilting within the sixteen blocks was just awful, but I wasn't going to give up.

Then I had the bright idea that I would use my letter embroidery feature on my sewing machine and print out the title “Prairie Basket” under the appliqué. Got that done, and then discovered after I stitched it I misspelled Prairie by leaving out the first "i". Too bad my sewing machine doesn't have spell check. I couldn't let that pass. By the way, don't try to rip out small embroidered letters. It doesn’t work. It was a mess.

Had to put on my thinking cap, then figured out that I would re-embroider the name, correctly spelled, on a colored strip and appliqué it over my "stupid" error. It worked, and actually turned out better than how I first tried to do it. Something went right!

The moral of this story, keep trying. It was pretty much a lost cause but I learned so much in doing it. Certainly not my best work, but when looking at it and remembering the ups and downs plus trying new things, makes me smile.

The Label on Back