The Most Photogenic Quilt Making – A Dresden Quilt #4 – In Progress

For the past 2+ weeks, I’ve been working on a new Dresden quilt, custom ordered.  I LOOOOOOOVVVVE Dresden quilts, but man oh, man, are they time consuming to make.  Even so, watching these beauties comes together might be prettier to me than any other quilt taking shape.

I was given a list of colors by my quilt buyer.  From that list, I chose this pic to be my inspiration for color.

You can view all my previous Dresden quilts here.  I’ve chosen to make this one a bit differently.  Instead of a 12.5″ background block to sew my Dresden Plate down on, I’m using 6.5″ squares sewn into a 4-patch to make a 12.5″ square.  I’ve also decided not to have a Dresden plate on every single block.  This should give it some space.  I feel like that is what might have been missing from my previous Dresden quilts.  I’m undecided on layout.

My quilt buyer has given me creative freedom on this project which makes me so much more excited to be working on it.

This quilt started out with me cutting all of my background 6.5″ squares.  I chose all of those to be in low volume, pale gray and a few in fuschia.  I then pieced them all into 12.5″ squares.

Next was one of the harder parts, cutting 1,200 dresden blades (I have a tutorial for cutting blades here).  I cannot tell you how badly my feet hurt that day.  I should have broken it up into multiple days, but I get anxious to get sections done.  It’s the OCD in me, I know.  Each day, I’ve done another part of the quilt.  This quilt is king size, so it’s taking me quite awhile to do each section of this.

I like to cut my blades from strips of scrap fabrics.  Most fabrics measure about 42″ long.  I prefer Dresden plates that only have two different fabrics used, and each Dresden uses 10 blades of each fabric, soooooo that tends to leave a few blades extra.  I DO NOT WANT THOSE going back into my scrap basket, so I’ll have a few scrappy Dresdens in this quilt as well.

I’ve gone ahead and completed all the parts of the scrappy Dresdens with the exception of their centers.  I’m pretty smitten.

Since there was not nearly as many of the scrappy versions, those were done fairly quickly.  The more cohesive Dresdens however, are sucking all time from my day.  I spent an afternoon turning all the blades inside out while watching TV, and then repeated for pressing all of them.  This past weekend, I finally got to the part where everything starts becoming worthwhile.  The plates!

It’s hard to argue with a Dresden’s beauty.  I find them to be ridiculously glorious and photogenic.

I might actually find the time to sew them down to the background squares if I can ever stop taking pictures of them.

I make no promises on when that might be.