Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. And if you love baskets and you love butterflies you’re going to love this week’s tutorial. 

Take a look at this quilt behind me. Look at this fabric. Isn’t this the most vibrant thing you’ve seen? It’s just gorgeous. I’m going to show you a quick, easy way to make baskets and we are going to have a fun time with this butterfly border out here. So to make this quilt you’re going to need one package of ten inch squares. And we have used Elysian by Jason Yenter for In the Beginning Fabrics. You’re going to need 2 ½ yards of a background fabric and we have used this nice black. Your border is going to be 1 ¾ yards of a border fabric. And your backing is going to be 4 ¾ yards of a 45 or 2 ½ yards of a 108. You’re also going to need some fusible and we have used Missouri Star Sew Light fusible and an 8 ½ inch squaring ruler will be helpful as well. 

So to make this quilt we’re going to go through our layer cake and we are going to make 37 baskets. So you can choose 37 squares in here. They do include some of the butterfly squares in the layer cake which I actually pulled out because I didn’t think they’d make great baskets. And if your butterfly is centered exactly you can use that for one of our butterflies that’s in the corner or on the quilt right here. But they’re not always centered perfectly so I actually cut those out of the border. So let me show you how to do these baskets because this is really fun. So we’re going to take our ten inch square and we are going to cut 3 ½ inches off of both sides. So we’re going to cut one this way on the side, 3 ½. And then we’re going to turn this piece and we’re going to cut 3 ½. Just like that. Then on this one right here we’re going to cut a 3 ½ inch square like this. And it’s going to leave you with these two pieces right here. Now you get two of these pieces off of every square you cut and so you will get quite a pile of these. And I was going to make a secondary project with these because how cool would that be but I actually just ran out of time so set those aside for an additional project that you can come up with because it’s going to be amazing. Alright so this should be a 6 ½ inch square and it is. We’re going to keep those two colors together and put them over here. So once you get your two pieces cut then we’re ready for the background. Now out of the background we’re going to cut, for each block, one five inch square. And then you’re going to cut a rectangle that is 4 ½ by 8 ½. And so we’re going to put those over here and this is the fabric that we need to make our basket. 

So the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to take our 6 ½ inch square and we are going to cut it once on the diagonal. So just cut it on the diagonal like this. And we’re going to set these aside. Then we’re going to take our little three inch square right here or 3 ½. And we’re going to put it on the five inch square like this. And we’re going to draw a line corner to corner and sew, we’re actually going to sew on both sides. So we’re going to draw a line on here corner to corner and we’re going to sew right on the line. So let me just get up here and put your presser foot, put your needle right on the line you’ve drawn. You can use your diagonal seam tape on this and just line it up on the red line and just sew it through. Now because this is a pretty big piece that we have extra out here, I actually sewed another line about a ½ an inch away because I can use these half square triangles and if I do that right now they’re already together. So I’m going to put this over here in my stack of we’re going to make another project out of this that’s going to be really cool. Because this fabric is so gorgeous. Alright so what we’re going to do right here is we are going to go ahead and press this back. And then we are going to cut this on the diagonal through the color just like this. So this is a really cool way to make a basket you guys. Alright so we’re going to set these aside for now. And this is going to be our basket and this is going to be our handle. 

So for your handle, if you cut a strip of fabric, or a strip of heat n bond that is about six inches wide you can just trace all your handles on here. And so what I do is I rough cut these out like this, just do really rough. And I’m going to lay my handle on the backside, I mean my heat n bond on the backside of this fabric right here. And you can tell on my tracing, it is not perfect. So what we’re going to do on here is, see how I have this and see how it’s not exactly perfect because I know that when I come in with my scissors that I’m going to make it perfect. So I like to fold this in half. And I’m going to make sure that my legs line up pretty good like this. And then I’m really just using one side as a pattern. And so I’m just going to cut here, make a nice gentle curve like this. And this way they both come out identical. They’re the same size. You don’t have a wonky side and a not so wonky side. And then this is your little handle right here. 

So on your 4 ½ by 8 ½ inch rectangle we are going to put this handle on. Just like that. Lay it on here. And we are going to just eyeball that, make sure it’s on there real nice, looks how you want it to. And then we’re going to press that down and then we’re going to machine applique around the top of that. So you can straight stitch it, you can zig zag it, you can, you know, do a little applique stitch, whatever you want to do. My sewing machine is only a straight stitch right here but all my other ones that I’ve done, you can see they have that nice little blanket stitch that runs around the outside edge, that little applique stitch. And it works real well. And I used the black thread because if I get off a little bit on that background I didn’t want it to show. And so you can just see, it just comes in and takes a little bite out of that handle on both sides. So that’s one of my favorite stitches. 

Alright, now we’re ready to make the bottom of our basket so we’re going to grab our triangle right here. And then we’re going to grab our two side pieces like this that we cut earlier. And these are going to go on here just like this. How cool is that? And we’ve made the bottom of our basket. So line this up, match these two top edges right here and sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. You’re going to have a hangover down here on the end and that’s what you want. So we’re going to line these up right here, sew a quarter of an inch and then we’re going to press this back. And then we’re going to add our other side. And again we’re going to line it up on the top edge right here, those two points should match and we’re going to sew a quarter of an inch right down that side. So line that up and then lay this over here and make sure you’ve got a quarter of an inch . And make sure that quarter of an inch stays true all the way down. I sometimes veer in a little bit as I get to the end and then I just have to sew back over that again. Alright.

So here’s the bottom of our basket. Here’s our handle that we’ve already appliqued. You want to applique your handle before you get all your blocks together because it’s hard to applique on a giant quilt. Alright so then we’re going to line these up right here, center that up and sew a quarter inch seam  right across the top. We’re going to press this open. And this is our cute little, quick and easy basket block. How fun was that? Just so quick. Alright now because we’re not perfect, we’re going to line this up on an 8 ½ inch ruler. We’re going to make sure that we have, you know, no edges peeking out. You might have a little bit here or a dog ear there. It should come out pretty close. And your little baskets are done. You’re going to make 37 of those. 

So let’s talk now about our butterfly blocks which are on here and in the corners and our borders. So you guys, this border fabric comes like this. Let me just show you. So it comes off the bolt like this with, look at these rows of butterflies. And you are going to just cut however wide you want your border to be. You’re going to cut there and you’re going to make your borders. And you’re going to cut them the length of your sides. You want this to be all one piece. I actually thought about mitering the corners at the top but I never could, this is not a great quilt to miter on because I never could get the butterfly so that it looked like a butterfly once I mitered it. So because the mitering didn’t work out I went ahead and my border is 10 ½ inches wide. And so I cut a 10 ½ inch square for the corner and appliqued butterflies on there. Now most of these butterflies, I want to point this out, most of them are kind of laying over another butterfly, another butterfly kind of comes over it but I didn’t worry about that when I was cutting them out. I just cut it out how it would normally look. And you can’t tell the difference. And so, like this butterfly right here has a little piece down here of another butterfly in it but you don’t notice that. That’s not something that’s going to draw your eye. And so I have one going over here, let me find it. . Here it is right here. And I just took my square, eyeballed it on there and just, you know, sewed around it as gently as I could. Now the little antenna on these butterflies are very tiny.. So look here, see how small  they are. I went ahead and cut some background around them so they weren’t so tiny. I was afraid that if I cut them too tiny that they would literally just pull apart and so they didn’t. And so I made up the rest of my squares. So I have 37 baskets and I have, you know, 38, 39, with these butterflies. So that enabled me to put one, two, three, four, five, six, baskets in the top row. And then on the next row I put one, two, three, four, five, blocks in there. When the rows set in like this it’s a 4 ½ by 8 ½ inch rectangle. And so that just sets them in and then of course, six and five and six and five. And that gives you all your blocks. 

So I want to talk for a minute now about the backing. Take a look at this backing. This is a cheater fabric. But this backing is so gorgeous and it looks like you sewed a whole bunch of tiny little squares together. It looks like you worked so hard. I love this backing and I just think it’s a gorgeous back. It’s a gorgeous line. So again I put a nice big 10 ½ inch border on here. Our quilt pattern  is called Flutterby. It’s little tiny butterflies that are just floating across the quilt. It’s so darling, it looks really great. I love the look of this. However I wanted to show you also, this is what the baskets look like on a white background. You know, so you’d change the whole look of this quilt if you changed the background fabric. So don’t be afraid to do that. Make it what you want. It’s your quilt. So this makes a great size quilt. It is 68 by 76 and we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Baskets and Butterflies quilt from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. 

Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. We hope you enjoyed watching this video. If you aren’t already part of the Missouri Star Quilt Company family be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss a thing. And if you click that bell it will notify you every time a new tutorial comes out. See you next Friday.