Going to Dresden, Part 1

Not this one, although I've been there and it's lovely

THIS ONE












I recently made several Dresden Plate blocks with my quilt guild as part of our ongoing Charity Quilt project and, while I loved how the blocks turned out, the traditional method of construction was a little fussy for me, involving making templates, tracing around them, cutting them out and THEN getting to the actual construction process. There's of course nothing wrong with doing it that way, but working with handmade templates has never given me my most accurate, or satisfying, results.  And I'm all about instant gratification, or as close as you can get to it when quilting!

Well, what about the Accuquilt Go cutter, my go-to gadget for quick and accurate cutting?

There is, in fact, a Dresden Plate die:


 

But here's the catch:  it's $89.99, making it one of the most expensive dies made. That's just way out of the budget for this underemployed divorced violinist.  (If you're feeling flush, it's available at www.accuquilt.com).
HOWEVER:  take a look at the middle row of the picture of the die.  See those blue shapes?  Don't they look like. .  .

. . .tumbler blocks?
YES.  You can make the petals of the Dresden Plate out of the 4 1/2" Tumbler block die, available on Ebay or Amazon for around $30, PLUS the die can of course be used for it's original purpose for a tumbler block quilt project.

That's what I call cost effective problem solving.

So grab some 5" scraps (or use leftovers from a charm pack), cut out 13 tumbler blocks and meet me back here for the next part of this tutorial!

Ellen's Quilt

My quilt guild friend Ellen recently asked me to finish a quilt for her.

She recently retired, and has swung into high gear as far as Getting Things Done is concerned. She's on a mission to finish up projects from the Old Life, and clear the decks for a New Life.

(I can totally relate!)

This quilt top was on her list of things she wanted completed.  I was happy to help out!

This quilt was a pattern-free project that she made up as she went along.

Dimensions:  about 45 x 65"

It's an improvisational project, so I felt comfortable with an equally improvisational quilting style.

It's quilted it in sections.

The larger sections have swirls.

There are also flowers in the 9 patch blocks, plus some straight line quilting throughout the quilt that unites all of the smaller sections of free motion quilting.

Ellen has an enviable capacity for precision pieceing of tiny fabric pieces.  As you can see from the picture at left, many of the squares are less than 1" finished.











This was a really fun project for me,
mostly because the quilt is in a completely
different style than what I usually do.  It's always fun to stretch my boundaries!

Other People's Quilts

My quilt guild friend Robbie came over today to baste a quilt.

I moved recently and in doing so lost my ginormous tile living room floor, and was sort of crossing my fingers that there would be room in this new house for basting.

No worries!  A minor amount of furniture shuffling in the dining room and there was plenty of space.

It looks like I set my camera for black and white pictures, but in fact we basted a gray and white quilt.

It's going to be a wedding gift, and apparently the bride and groom wanted this color scheme.

Size is 70" square

It's neat looking in person and Robbie said it was an absolute breeze to put together.  I might have to make one of these myself!













Another person's quilt:

My friend Christine asked me to quilt this for her. She likes to make quilt tops but doesn't like to do the quilting.  I'm flattered that she likes my quilting enough to hire me to do it for her!

This is also a commercial pattern, in kind of an odd size:  about 53 x 88"

 It has a beautiful collection of batik strips in blues, greens and browns.

This is going to be a young man's quilt (for her son, in his 20s) so I kept the quilting very simple-- a grid pattern of straight lines, and a few wavy lines for flourish.

There will be a binding of batik strips for the finish.

The back is also really pretty, and there's a nice picture and inscription of Christine and her son at the bottom right.  Sweet!










On a more personal note:

I recently had a birthday, accompanied by an absolute tidal wave of love, laughs, and margaritas by my friends and family.

Yes.  It was THAT birthday.

Binding, and Show & Tell

After several months of work on this big project, I'm seeing a light at the end of the Scrappy Trip-Along tunnel.

My quilt guild came over on Wednesday and helped me baste it.  I am one lucky quilter to have friends like this to help out!  The quilt is a generous queen size at approximately 90 x 100 inches-- a daunting task to take on myself (my hamstrings hurt just thinking about it) but with 5 of us there it was a fast and easy job.

I quilted it with a neutral gray thread with a simple meandering stitch.

The pattern is so busy that that the quilting hardly shows, so it seemed like Keeping Things Simple was the best quilting plan.

Today's project:  450 inches of binding!

Anyway, let me get the binding finished and then I'll take more (and better) pictures of this (almost) finished project!








A highlight on Wednesday, besides getting my quilt basted, was a little show and tell from guild member Jackie.

You might recall from this post that she has had to make herself a new wardrobe of queen size bed quilts, due to the purchase of a new and thicker mattress. She brought along 2 completed tops to show.

Brace yourself:

I believe she said there were 664 blocks in this quilt.

 They're all hand pieced.  The bottoms of the baskets are a pieced pattern, and the little handle is appliqued.

The blocks are 4" finished.

She's planning to machine quilt it.

She even made a beautiful back for it!












And, in case we weren't overwhelmed enough with that one, she also had this top to show, this one in autumn colors:

This one was also completely pieced by hand-- although, I think with hexagon blocks like that it would be almost easier than trying to do them with a machine.

This one will also be machine quilted.

And if you're thinking that she must be retired, or a Lady Of Leisure to produce so many quilts, THINK AGAIN.  She has a Real Job at Florida Hospital here in Tampa, and works long hours.  Obviously, she has given up sleep in the name of quilt production.

Team Basting

Last night was designated by my quilt guild as a Basting Extravaganza, and my basting floor (which doubles as my Living Room) got a big workout!

First up:  my Design Opportunity Quilt (see this post for more about this project.  Hint:  it was supposed to look completely different!)

I often baste this size quilt myself but as long as 6 friends were around to help, why not enlist the troops?  Like most of the quilts we basted during this session, it only took about 15 minutes to complete.





Next were several charity quilts:

Pictured at right:  I had made those house blocks YEARS ago, and they had hung around forever and I never did anything with them, so I donated them to be made into charity quilts.

Looking at that quilt, I almost regret giving them away.  Almost.

It was a fun and productive evening!

Basting, and a Recipe

   

My basting floor has been busy lately.












Last week, Robbie from my quilt guild brought over a quilt top for us to pin.

It's a big quilt, about 96 x 105".

It's for her mom's king size bed.

Robbie said her mom has Very Conservative Taste, so this 3 fabric, rail fence quilt will be quite the Walk on the Wild Side for her.

I think it's beautiful and I'm sure she's going to love it!  Nice job Robbie!







Another large quilt arrived last night.

This is all you get for now.

Jackie's niece is getting married in November, and we basted her wedding quilt last night.  TRUST ME, it's a beauty.  But it's also a surprise.  So I'll post more ( and better!) pictures of it after the wedding.











As long as we were on the floor last night, we also basted a charity quilt.

Well, I don't know about all of you, but I find that crawling around on a tile floor for a couple of hours works up an appetite!  The dessert I made last night was a big hit, and couldn't be easier, so here's the recipe:

Frosty Orange Pie

1(8 oz.) package cream cheese, at room temperature
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (6 oz) can frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
1 (8 oz.) carton frozen whipped topping, thawed
1/2 tsp. orange extract (optional, but good.  Look for it in the spice aisle at the market)
1 (9") graham cracker crust

Beat cream cheese and sweetened condense milk until smooth.  Beat in orange juice concentrate and orange extract. Fold in whipped topping.  Pour into crust and freeze.  I freeze mine uncovered, then cover the pie with foil once it's frozen.

yum!

More Team Basting

  

You might recall from this post that my living room, with its large expanse of open floor, is Basting Central Command for the members of my quilt guild.



Last night Jackie brought over a new quilt top for us to pin baste.  It's a beauty!

Wow!  That's 546 tumbler blocks of Halloween fabrics!

 

Halloween is Jackie's favorite holiday, and she's been collecting Halloween fabrics for YEARS.









She said she had been inspired by my tumbler block baby quilts (like this one pictured) and thought it would be a great setting for her Halloween quilt.

The big difference:  I have an Accuquilt Go cutter with the tumbler block die, which makes these blocks super quick and easy (it's one of my favorite dies!).  Jackie doesn't own an Accuquilt, so she did hers The Awesome Way:  a plastic template, a pencil, and a pair of scissors.  546 times.

   So not only was this a fun quilt to baste, it was a fast job with five of us working on it.  I think we were done basting this oversized queen size quilt in about 30 minutes.

There's the back of the quilt, also really beautiful!

With the labor of the evening quickly dispensed with, we had plenty of time for the other regularly scheduled event of quilt guild meetings:

tea and cake!

More Handsewn Beauty

You'll recall from my last post how much fun it was to baste Jean's hand pieced quilt here at my house last week.

Here's one more look at all the hard work it took to thread baste that beautiful top and get it ready for hand quilting.



But that wasn't the end to the evening's activities!






Jackie had found herself in A Quilting Dilemma, one that could only be worked out on my big open floor.
Perhaps some of you have found yourself in a similar situation:

She had made this beautiful Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top (also hand cut and hand sewn) for her bed, then found herself buying a new mattress, and the quilt top is now TOO SMALL.  Specifically, the quilt top is now too narrow to fit her bed..

Now, this is not the type of quilt that you can just tack more borders onto and call it done.

So she had made a bunch more of the blocks, and wanted to lay everything out on the floor, mostly to take measurements to see if she had made enough extra blocks (she had).

These blocks are so typical of Jackie's unique quilting style:  a traditional block, hand sewn, but with super modern fabrics.

Yet another spectacular quilt that I can't wait to see finished!