Butterflies in Mom's Basket

This is a quilt my Mom finished on 7/7/07. It was partially inspired by a African stripe basketweave quilt by Kaffe Fassett in his book Passionate Patchwork (I think that's the right book).



It's prettier than "Japanese Beetles In My Bucket," which is another composition of my mother's that I had a good laugh about. While I was at my mom's, just before we took these photos, we walked around her garden together on the daily "beetle walk." She has a sharp eye for them, and she holds whatever leaf they're on and tips them into her bucket of soapy water, where they drown. I suppose there's no way not to make it sound morbid, but they're a pest. It's a whole lot nicer than spraying a bunch of toxic chemicals on everything, and otherwise they ruin the trees and bushes and grapes.

One excellent feature of this quilt is that it becomes two sided. The backing is a light color, and my mother quilted all the stripes in colors that match the fabric of the stripes, so the pattern of the basket shows through on the back, even without this much sunlight streaming through.



Nice job, Mom!