Projects and Basket Weaving at Gail's

Looking out from the lenai at the sunset my first night there.  Lots of color!

 I started two quilts while at Gail's using my large collection of black and white fabrics.  I was determined to use lots of these while down at the beach this winter.  Each year, I try to select some project to do that I just don't do while back in Rochester.  I have been collecting black and white fabrics for years.  I was pleased to note, however, that I had quite a selection of fat quarters which were super useful for these two projects.  The first is one I saw on Judy Simmon's blog and the second was from a workshop we had at GVQC years ago.  I didn't do the project during that time as I didn't have time to prepare.  I am very happy with their progress.  They are both super easy and quick.

This one uses partial seams and I drafted it using EQ8 which I finally installed on my computer after buying it several months ago!

This is the incredibly complex lion that my sister is working on.  More power to her!!

On Friday, we had a class on basket weaving.  I wasn't sure whether I would enjoy this or not but figured what the heck and would support my sister as she was having the teacher in her home.  This was the very beginning of the bottom of the basket which was for me the very trickiest part and I had to be shown several times just how to do this!!

This was our instructor Katy working on that bottom part.

You work with everything wet and here we wrapped the spokes  up so they would start to turn upwards and we could start weaving the sides.

 Here the sides are pretty much woven as high as we were to go,

Gail is weaving the sides on her basket.

After the sides were all woven, we just had to finish it off and add the handle.  This was accomplished by adding a couple of pieces of wide rattan on the inside and outside of the basket with sea grass on top to hide the edge where we had tucked those spokes back on themselves in the basket.  We then wove around that edging and finished it off  The teacher added the handles on all our baskets before that last step  Gail is holding up her finished basket.

This is my finished basket which now contains paper napkins on my dining room table.

And here we are with all our baskets and you can see there is quite a bit of variation in the size and shape!! with March overachieving the most (on the far right with the largest basket!

And by the way, I really  had fun in the class!!  Don't think I would know where to get the materials on my own though!  Would do a larger version of this basket in a heart beat  It is a nice size and very sturdy once dry!