It’s good to be back (live!) with a brand new quilt, and new designers! We’ve been hard at work, revamping our format and our concept, and we have something special for you. Bountiful is our newest Block of the month, and it’s a scrap basket quilt designed to let you take your fabrics out and play. We asked our designers to use a simple concept - 8 1/2″ on pointe baskets, cream or white background - that’s all the parameters we gave them.

Here’s the quilt design -

Our First block comes From Karen Comstock of www.quiltricks.com. She did a wonderful job of kicking off the quilt, and we’re happy to welcome her here to Cotton Spice as one of our designers. Here are the directions for the block she did.

This is an appliqued block.  Fusible web was used to affix the basket and flowers to the background prior to sewing them on with a blanket stitch.

Fabric Requirements:
 a.  9-inch square of beige or white background fabric
 b.  Scraps of various purples (flowers)
 c.  Scraps of green (leaves)
 d.  8-inch square of brown for basket
 e.  Gold and Green embroidery floss
 
1)  Reverse the design and trace each image onto the paper side of fusible web.  Fuse it to the wrong side of your fabric - that way your basket and flowers will face the correct way! 

2)  Cut out the basket, remove the paper and center it in the background square of fabric.  Using a blanket stitch (by hand or machine), sew down the edges and marked lines of the basket    

3)   Cut out each leaf and flower.  Remove the paper from all of them, arrange them in the basket  using the picture as a guide, and carefully press in place.  You may want to blanket stitch some of the underneath pieces before pressing the top pieces over them.  Blanket stitch around each leaf and flower.

4)  Take 3 strands of yellow/gold floss (DMC 742 was used in the sample) and make three french knots in the center of each flower.

5)  Take 2 strands of green floss (DMC 904 was used in the sample) and embroider the tendrils using a stem stitch.

6)  Press the completed block and trim to 8-1/2 inches square.