Say Yes To The Dress is Finished!

Ta-da!

Finally done and it only took about 18 months.  To be fair to myself, I worked on it off and on, not continuously.  And there are many hours in all the hand applique and hand quilting.

Here's a closer look at the quilting.  I quilted a grid behind each dress form, which helps the dress pop off the background.

And I quilted a swirl design in the border, using a stencil I had on hand.  Even though I washed the quilt to get the markings out, a few faint pencil lines remain, fortunately hardly noticeable.  I used a Sewline pencil to mark the quilting lines in the border.  I used painters tape for the grid. 

I'm very happy with it and think it will look terrific hanging in my sewing room.  But when I showed it to Mr. Main Street, he said, "What are those?  Trees?"  Thank God, I have you, Dear Readers, for a little appreciation!  (It is highly likely that Mr. Main Street had never heard of nor seen a dress form until now.)

The pattern I used for Say Yes To The Dress is called Pretty Dresses and is in the book Quilting With My Sister, by Barbara Brandeburg and Teri Christopherson.   The book is out of print but available on Amazon.com.  And they have released the design as an individual quilt pattern. 

The original design is 16 dress blocks, set four by four and finishes at 50" by 58".  I made my version smaller by reducing the number of blocks and it is 38" by 44".  Also, the original design calls for fusible applique but I added seam allowances and used needleturn applique.

The pattern calls for small pieces of lots of different prints so it is a great user-upper of scraps and stash.  I enjoyed unleashing my inner fashionista to pick out the various dress prints!  And the only thing I had to buy for this quilt was thread to match the fabrics for the applique.  I even had a piece of batting on hand.

What's next?