wedding quilt

My best friend's daughter married her college sweetheart this weekend. We were so thankful to be included in the festivities. She had requested a quilt for their bed, mostly in blues, so of course I was happy to make one for her. I mixed in some greens and purples, mostly grunges and solids.

I used a pattern from the quilt book We Love Color which I had made before, but I enlarged the blocks so the quilt would be bigger. It's a fun pattern because the centers of the pluses are basically improved.

My pal Diann quilted it for me...

her quilting choices are always spot on.

 Wishing them all the happiness in the world.

Tiny Dresden Party

Deidre over at Quilty Obsession has introduced  a fun sew along over on instagram #tinydresdenparty. You'll want to check out all of the amazing things being shared on that hashtag! So much fun. The idea is to create dresdens smaller than 5" diameter & make things from them. Always the rule breaker (in sewing anyways, I'm totally a rule follower in life), I have been making tiny dresdens from my solid scraps.

These all measure 4 1/2 - 5 inches across. Crazy! Also, I didn't want huge holes in the center of my tiny dresdens (although many over on instagram are fussy cutting fabulous large circles for their centers).  I made myself templates using my various dresden rulers. I simply extended the narrow edge of the templates, continuing the same angle, until the bottom of each wedge was just over 1/2". This way when I created my dresdens, I ended up with small holes in the center.

Tons of instagramers (is that a word?) are putting their tiny dresdens on pin cushions or pouches and they are so cute! I decided I wanted to put mine into hoops & add embroidery and embellishments. I chose the rainbow dresden for my first week's hoop

After I appliquéd my dresden to a black grunge background, I filled the center hole with tiny black sequins.

I added some chain stitch lines to match each wedge and then, because I simply couldn't leave well enough alone, I filled the negative space with more tiny black sequins.

I love this in a 7 inch hoop. And yes, I decided the hoop needed to be black. Did I have any black paint? No. Sharpie marker to the rescue! I only had one hoop this size, so I'm waiting on an Amazon order to continue this project.

Stay tuned for more tiny dresden hoops to come.

2017 the year of the dresden

2017 was a fun year in my studio! As usual, it took me places I didn't expect and I learned so much. If I had to name my year, it would be the year of the dresden. The year kicked off with the creation of my funky dresden....

Which evolved into a tutorial and instagram sew along (my first!) which was lots of fun....

Dresden play continued and found it's way into my Riley Blake challenge minis...

And then I came up with my spiral dresden, which is heading to New York to live...

My MQG sponsored a dresden swap, and you better believe I was all over that! Here are the dresdens I received in the swap....

And the quilt I created with them...

Whew, that's a lot of dresdens. I thought I'd be moving on to something new in 2018, and then I saw the #tinydresdenparty announced over at Quilty Obsession and I knew I'd be joining in (it starts January 3). Spoiler alert, I've already made 2 tiny dresden for the party..... here we go again!

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Dresden Swap Quilt

Lately I've been thinking maybe I should change my word of the year to DRESDEN! Thinking this will be my last dresden quilt for the year. (never say never, I know, I know). I shared with you a while back that we swapped dresdens at McKinney Modern Quilt Guild. If you want to see the dresdens I made for the swap and a before shot of the ones I received, you can read all about it here.

This is my final quilt made with those dresdens I received! I really love the way the colors pop off of a black background. Not wanting it to be just boring solid black, I did a patchwork background of a mix of "reads black" fabrics and I'm so happy I did! The dresdens are all appliquéd on top of the pieced background. After appliquéing each one, I was able to carefully cut away behind the dresden and use the background pieces I cut to create the center circles.

I really love the way this turned out! Collaboration quilts make me so happy.... I know who made some of the dresdens I received but not all (I wish we had all initialed the back of ours? or something). I'm looking forward to seeing what others have done with the dresdens they received.

Finished quilt is 40" x 42"

Quilted by Diann (Happy Quilts)

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and another dresden

One of my retreat finishes last week was this crazy dresden quilt! It was another one of those designs I woke up with early morning and had to make right away. In some ways I love when that happens, those seem to be my most creative moments, just before the day begins. But really, it throws everything off! Nothing else gets accomplished around here until I give in to the ideas and get them made. Oh well!

I grabbed two contrasting Kona cottons that were in my stash, my usual slate gray and a bright orange, and went to work. Each wedge is made from a seamed strip of the two colors, cut with a 9 degree dresden ruler. This means there are 40 total wedges in the spiral. I did the math & cut each dresden 1/4" longer than the previous one. I'm not going to lie, this took a while! But it was oh so worth it in the end!

I was so in love with the final result, I knew I had to take it to my pal Diann (Happy Quilts) for quilting. I couldn't risk ruining it. And I'm so glad I did!

Diann custom quilted it. Check out some of her incredible work...

All that was left for me to do at retreat was the binding!

Finished quilt is 31" square. Also, it needs a name.....

dresdens

It seems I have become a bit of a dresden fanatic lately! This has been fueled in part by a challenge/swap issued by our guild (McKinney Modern Quilt Guild). We were challenged back in the spring to make up to 12 dresdens in a  certain color palette to swap at our August meeting. If I still had the color card I'd share it with you, but it has disappeared. There was a wide range of options, a full rainbow really, in jewel tone shades. We could make any size dresden, any size wedge, in the color palette that we wished. I decided to make a variety of kinds and sizes in primarily two of the colors (teal and bright pink). Then I found a stripe in my stash that had most of the colors in it, so I used that too. In the end I had 8 dresdens to swap.

I turned them in at our meeting last week and received these 8, made by other guild members (I wish I knew who!)

Aren't they wonderful? Now the challenge is to make them into "something" by our October meeting. I have a few ideas and the clock is ticking!