Well, it’s true what they say, that first year on the tenure-track is a doozy! The reason behind my lack of activity here is that work required quite a bit of focus over the last year. But I’ve still been sewing, and I’d like to try to catch up on sharing some of this work over the summer!
First up is my dresden quilt which I finished hand quilting this winter. Instagram tells me I pulled the fabric for this quilt 90(!) weeks ago. I went through and found all of my Denyse Schmidt fabric, because I have been in love with her designs from day one, and have managed to amass quite a collection!
I wanted to play with color combinations by creating dresdens in a range of colorways. Some had a more limited palate, whereas others combined a bunch of colors. I left one dresden composed of all neutral fabrics, and included some “missing pieces” of neutral fabrics in the surrounding dresdens. There are even a couple of rainbow dresdens that I snuck in for good measure.
Each dresden was machine appliqued to a background square composed of mixed neutral fabrics. One of the reasons this quilt took me a while (besides the size) was stitching up all the little pieces that make up the background blocks.
The blocks were sewn into rows and then joined. I machine quilted in the ditch along the long rows before adding hand quilting around each dresden, as well as in the hexagons that I added to the middle of each dresden plate.
For the back, I continued with the theme, and chose fabrics in a range of colors from my DS stash. Each strip was cut selvedge to selvedge, and I added a gray row in the middle to make it big enough (I think the quilt top is around 85 inches square).
It took most of the winter to get the quilting done, but I am so glad with how it turned out. It is a very heavy quilt, due to the many layers of fabric, and it will be back on our bed when the fall returns.
I live how sparkly your Dresden masterpiece looks with those random neutral backgrounds. And the backing is fabulous too!
WHOA. That is a hell of a quilt! Gorgeous and so much wonderful depth and detail. That’s an heirloom work of art!
wow, so pretty! congrats on finishing!
This is spectacular! Love it, and love the use of hexagons in the centres.
gorgeous!! beautiful work. 🙂 congratulations!! i am a huge DS fan myself and am working on my own ode…an english paper pieced hexagon quilt. i keep joking it will be done for 2020, but secretly i think that is the truth!
Did I mention I am completely in love with this quilt? 😝
Just so, so good. I can look at this all day!!