Dresden quilt finished!

 

Finally - a finish! Is this really the first finish I've had since June (wonky square rings)? Sadly, yes! I think summer is just a busy time. After my wedding in September, it's game on, a bonanza of quilty finishes. So I say now! :P

Here's the scoop on my Dresden quilt...

The idea began June 5.
The instructions on how I constructed this quilt were posted on June 11.
The progress was featured in a couple WIP posts throughout June and July.
That's 2.5 months in total! I didn't pay it nearly enough attention this summer, but it's done now and just in time for the contest deadline. :)
I'm entering it in the "innovative" category!

Quilt Summary..

Fabric: Poetica, by Pat Bravo, and some Kona solids.
Size: 53" x 72"

The design is based off of an 18 degree triangle template. I used the EZ Dresden ruler to cut wedges from a ginormous (54"x54") log cabin block. I arranged the wedges randomly in 8" rows, using a gray Kona solid as the background.

I did straight line quilting that echos the 18 degree triangle on the back of the quilt. The binding is machine sewn.

I love back! The triangle makes me so happy, and the light purple is such a great contrast to the dark gray on the front. I don't mind exclaiming over how much I love the back, because, to be honest - the front sort of didn't turn out as great as I had imagined! It's sooo dark. Too dark! I think I can live with it though. :)

Lots and lots and lots of pics! I'm really happy about this quilt, but it's future is yet to be determined. This one might be a gifter.

I hope everyone had a great weekend, and really, a great summer - hard to believe it's almost over!

Hey house guests, mind if I do some sewing?

Not a lot to report this week. We have had company from out of town staying with us, so I haven't had very much time to sew at all. Last night we all drank frozen margaritas and play board games. One of the categories I got during a game of "Outburst Jr." was, "things you would find in a sewing basket" - can you believe I only got 7 out of 10?! How could I forget "pincushion"? Lol - that was pretty fun. 

I managed to get one strip of my Dresden quilt done. With the exception of the pointy pieces, it was easier than I thought it would be to piece together. Sewing the points is tricky, because you want to have a 1/4" of gray after the tip, to account for the seam. It's really hard to make it exactly 1/4" - I am going to have to settle for being okay with imperfections in this quilt!

Here is how I made the strip. I cut a 9" wide section of the Kona Coal. I laid one of the blocks down (face up), being careful that the bottoms and tops of the fabrics lined up straight. Then I traced a line along one of the edges.

I flipped the block over and used the line I drew as a guide to sew along.

Finally, I trimmed along the seam and pressed it open. I'll probably end up with quite a bit of scrap of the gray - at least it's a color I'm sure I'll find good use for!

So that's it! :) I'm a bit late for the WIP Wednesday linky with Lee @ Freshly Pieced, and I'm not sure I'll have time to visit very many blogs tonight, so I'm gonna skip out this week. I have plans tomorrow night and Friday night with our guests, but I'll have my freedom back Saturday, so maybe I'll make some good progress over the weekend! Hope you guys are having a great week so far. :)

Dresden Progress

My mom finished her 37 year career last month, and is now happily retired. :) Over the weekend my fiance and I drove to the other side of Michigan - where my sister, brother and all of our extended family threw her a big surprise celebration party Friday night - it was a blast! I danced my pants off and ate tons of cake. When we got home, my Dresden template and "Quilting Modern" book were waiting for me in the mail! So I was able to make some progress on the Dresden Challenge quilt I've been planning.

I thought I'd show you guys how I'm going about making this one, because it's a little more complicated than the patchwork stuff I've been doing.

The first thing I did was make a giant log cabin block - 54" square. Another option would be to sew 54" strips together until you get a 54" square block. You could use any size, it really doesn't matter - but probably 36" at a minimum.

 Using the Dresden template, this is what the cutting lines look like laid out on the block.

I started drawing the cutting lines (with a washable pencil) by locating the exact center of the block. I drew a little dot, and then I put the Dresden template down on the block, along with a straight edge. The first time you lay the Dresden template down, you want the bottom of the template to be parallel to the sewing lines. The template doesn't have a pointy end, which I didn't know when I planned out this quilt. It will still work, but you have to fuss around a little to get the template and straight edge in the correct location.

I worked my way around the block, until I had all 20 wedges drawn in. I needed to use the straight edge to continue the lines down from the template, since it isn't long enough to trace all the way to the edge of the block.

The next step is the fun part - cutting out all the wedges. My cutting mat isn't nearly big enough to use a straight edge and rotary cutter, so I used my shears to carefully cut along the lines I drew.

Eventually I had 20 wedges.

After they were all cut, I had to make them all the same size. I found the first wedge I drew (the one parallel to the sewing lines) and laid that down with 4 other wedges under it. First I cut the scrap off of the other wedges, so all 5 wedges were the same size. Then, I divided the length of the wedge by three. This ended up being 9".

I repeated this step until all of the wedges were trimmed and cut into thirds. And that is where I ended up, with three stacks of pieces like this:

I think it's going to be tricky to sew the pointy pieces and keep the sharp point, hopefully that will work out okay. I feel like the pointy triangles might be a little too skinny, but we'll see.

I don't think these wedges are all that impressive until you lay them out on the Kona Coal. I love how the gray makes everything pop! The next step will be sewing the grey fabric onto the pieces to create rows. First I might want to tidy up my sewing room... LOL. It's pretty yikes.

I hope you all had an awesome weekend. Thanks for stopping by! :)