Are you on Instagram?!

Well if you are and your not following me your missing out on some fun! I am having a giveaway in honor of my first 500 followers. The winner gets to pick between a free completed Mini Quilt or a $100.00 Gift certificate for machine quilting! All you need to do is save the photo below (or get the same photo from my IG stream) then post it on your IG wall along with the hash-tag #dresdendreams14 and if your not already following me be sure to hit the follow button! The winner will be picked on April 1, 2014 Good Luck!

Grandmother's Diamond Ring

A few months back i decided to "weed out" some of my unused quilting books and magazines. Giving them to a dear friend Mary that teaches quilting classes, i knew it would be a great way to get them off my shelves, where they had been collecting dust for years, and into the hands of others that might actually use them! When looking over all the books i came across "The Creative Pattern Book" by Judy Martin. I had made a quilt from the book years ago for a cousin's wedding. The marriage didn't last but from what i have been told the quilt is still around. The quilt was called Grandmothers Diamond RIng and i remember how complicated the finished quilt looked but how easily, if you followed the cutting directions, the quilt was to piece. I did not do much custom quilting back then, matter of fact i am pretty sure i probably quilted it with a pantograph pattern. A quick look at the chapter on the Diamond Ring quilt and i knew instantly that i could do so much more quilting wise with it now than i did back then. i also knew exactly which one of my customers i would be able to con... i mean talk into making it!

Remember Mary? The one that teaches the quilting classes and was also gifted all the books from my shelves that i no longer wanted? Mary is an amazing quilter, no really she is. Her quilts are almost always perfectly pieced, almost never have a wavy border and if her points are even a 1/16" off she will take the block apart and fix them. I have only ever quilted a couple of her quilts that had problem, and she warned me before she even gave them to me that they had issues. Now remember my hatred of irish Chains? Mary would be slightly responsible for that too! She teaches beginning quilting to a lot of people and the first quilt she has them make you ask? Yap, The Double Irish Chain. I have to agree with her that the Irish chain is a great first quilt but i also have to admit i get a bit tired look at them.

Getting back to the Diamond Ring quilt, I KNEW that this was a perfect quilt for Mary, now to just convince her to make it. Well it wasn't all that hard to do really i just had to say Scrappy, Reproduction prints, quilt show quilt , and BINGO she was buying fabrics before i even loaned her my book! Mary LOVES scrappy quilts and reproduction fabrics! I had warned her that the pattern was a bit different from her favorite pattern designer Eleanor Burns books, but if she would follow the cutting directions and didn't rush that when it came to piecing the little bits together they would line up perfectly.  it didn't take mary Long to finished the quilt and bring it to me to quilt for her but it has taken me a few months to decide exactly how to quilt it! (see my last post on Sketching Out Quilting Design) i had to ask for some help from other machine quilters before i was happy with the finished quilting.

So here it is, Grandmothers Diamond Ring made by Mary H., machine quilting by Elizabeth Karnes

Original pattern from "The Creative Pattern Book" By Judy Martin, published by Crosley-Griffith Publishing Company

Dresden Plate Love!

Dresden Plate Quilts, i Love them as much as i hate Irish Chains!

When growing up I had a Dresden plate quilt that was made by my Grammy, at least i think she made it. It had a red background with little tiny white flowers and the plates were all made from what i always assumed was scraps. I LOVED that quilt, matter of fact i loved it to death! I finally had to let it go when it started to look more like  high class Swiss cheese than it did a quilt.

I have made a few Dresden plate quilts myself, and i love each and every one of them. i have also quilted a lot of them for others. I think i have seen  pretty much every combo of fabrics out there today, solids,  neon prints, novelties, reproduction fabrics, and of course batiks. i have yet to see or quilt a Dresden plate that i dislike.

This week i was lucky enough to quilt a very pretty batik Dresden plate that was made by a friend and customer Bev E. that i thought i would share with you all. Bev picked Quilters Dream Poly Batting and i picked two different color threads to blend in with the fabrics that she used to make the top.









Pretty isn't it?!