Dottie Dresden {a finished quilt}

In the beginning of November, Rachel of Stitched in Color announced a scrap challenge from one of her sponsors, Lark Cottons.  The fabric was a sweet fat eighth bundle of polka dot fabrics.  The only rules were the project had to be finished by November 30 and you had to use all the fabrics in the bundle (you could add your own fabric). 

I wrote a tutorial detailing how I made the dresdens.  The blocks each measured 15” unfinished.  Then I decided to sew up the rest of the scraps to make wonky sashing to go between the blocks.  That’s my favorite part of the quilt!  I tried a new fmq design called “Ribbon Candy” by Angela Walters and it is magical!  It was easy to do and looks so good.  The light was coming into my sewing room so brightly and just illuminated the stitching in this photo.

Deciding how to quilt everything was the hardest part, because I still always want to just stipple everything and not try a lot of new things.  But I really went out of control on this quilt.  I used Aurifil cone thread in Dove.  Love!!!

I stitched flowers in the center of each plate, several sections of pebbles, and some teardrop shapes.  Then I tried to make scales in the negative space.  I’m not sure if I like how the scales turned out, but overall I’m happy with the texture of the quilt.  It is surprising that the quilt is not stiff at all, but still nice and soft.  I haven’t washed it yet, but I bet it will be even softer!

The back of the quilt is one of the bird prints from Heather Bailey’s line Up Parasol.  The fabric reminds me so much of our cockatiel, so of course I had to use it for something!  The binding is an unidentified light solid pink fabric I found in my stash. 

I had a slight problem putting the binding on the quilt…I couldn’t find my Clover Wonder Clips anywhere!  Finally I remembered they were in a tote bag.  We were asked to share fun quilting gadgets at the last guild meeting and I never emptied out the bag.  After I found the Wonder Clips, binding was a breeze!

I’ve been using the Wonder Clips for over a year, but just a few weeks ago I figured out that I could clip the mitered corner and sew a continuous line all around the binding without backstitching and stopping at each corner.  Duh!

Tada!  A pretty good looking corner!

The finished quilt is 30” x 30”.  Originally I was going to use this quilt as a wall-hanging, but now I can’t make a decision.  It’s so soft and has a lot of fun fabrics, so I think it might make a nice baby quilt. 

Thanks for visiting and I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends!