Week 50 - Grapes of Wrath

This week's inspiration was Julia Ward Howe's lyrics for The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Since we all love the hymn with its stirring words, this block must go in the quilt (I'll be dropping one block because there are 53 Saturdays this year, and my layout uses 52 blocks.) Since I'm not using purple for this quilt, I decided I could use the music-themed navy blue print I used once before to remind myself the block is about the song.

(I rotated my block in software to orient the basket correctly.)

Since I am not crazy about basket blocks, I went all out and made the more complicated version, courtesy of EQ and Blockbase. Yeah, making the harder version makes no sense at all. And my fabric choices probably don't seem right to a traditional eye. Both times I found this in my references, it was illustrated with a light-colored fabric where I used the brown on white print. I worried that a light fabric there would just look like holes in the basket of grapes, so I picked a busier light. I figured there were supposed to be leaves someplace in the basket, but I couldn't figure out where they might go. Still, I chose to add my seldom-selected green fabric here for that reason.

I think next time I would be smarter, and would cut and piece the many half-square triangle elements oversized and then cut them down for greater accuracy. Cutting to 1-16th of an inch is really not my thing.