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?

 

Scrap Basket Sunday - Week 3

And then there were ten!

Ten lemoyne star blocks finished.  I'm using the Rapid Fire LeMoyne Star ruler, which makes the construction fairly easy but requires a lot of trimming.  The last step is to trim the star blocks to size.  I did trim my test block but haven't trimmed the rest yet.  I'm waiting until I have all the blocks finished and know what setting I will use. 

You can find more Scrap Basket Sunday participants here, along with a discussion of what, exactly, constitutes a "scrap" when it comes to quilting.

 

More Scrappiness - Elaine's Happy Quilt

After reading my last post on scrap quilts, Elaine Peltier sent me some photos of her curent scrap quilt project.  She says she seems to have an ever abundant accumulation of scraps and was racking her brain to figure out how to make use of them when she saw the cover of the June 2013 cover of Quilt magazine. 

 

Elaine said that as soon as she saw this quilt on the cover, she knew it was the answer for her pile of scraps.  The quilt designer is Brioni Greenberg, who is one of the Fat Quarterly crew.  The quilt is 90" square.  (You could down-size the blocks to make a smaller quilt.)

 

Brioni showed this quilt on her blog, flossybossy, a little over a year ago.  She said it used about 18 yards of scraps from her stash.  I call that a real stash buster!

Elaine has already started work on her version; this is her work in progress on her design wall. She is calling it "My Happy Quilt" and I can see why.  Not only is is made with happy colors but is a happy solution to the over-flowing scrap basket dilemma.

Are you inspred?  You should be able to find Quilt magazine at your local quilt shop, Barnes & Noble, or you can order if from The Fat Quarter Shop.

 

Scrap Quilt Ideas

My primary project right now is the LeMoyne star Scrap Basket Sunday project. I'm making my stars out of partial fat quarters from my vast Fig Tree Quilts fabric collection.  I still have a lot of fat quarters and other large-ish pieces of fabric to work with in my Fig Tree Harvest project, but it is only a matter of time before I am down to true scraps.  So I started "collecting" scrap quilt ideas.  I saw Camp Randall from Primitive Gatherings on Linda's blog (she quilted the original) and went absolutely nuts for it!  I immediately ordered the pattern.

The photos Linda took look even better than the pattern cover photo.  I'm saving my small Fig Tree pieces in order to make this one; I'll have to find a unifying fabric to use in place of the navy used for the original. 

And I've been saving scrap quilt ideas on a Pinterest board. 

Here are some more scrappy quilt ideas:

Frequent Flyer was my last true scrap quilt.  It uses uneven 9-patch blocks and a flying geese border.  The pattern was in an issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. 

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The Dresden plate block lends itself well to the use of scraps.  Summertime is scrappy but I used fat quarters. 

Tilted Spools, from the book Pretty Patchwork Quilts by Cyndi Walker.

 

 

Six-pointed stars in a block called seven sisters.

 

 

A Quilt For Alice, a pattern from Red Crinoline Quilts.

 

 

 

With so many scrappy designs vying for my attention, I may need more scraps!

 



Scrap Basket Sunday - Week 2

Six blocks made in my long term project.  I'm making a few scrappy lemoyne star blocks each week.  Eventually, I'll have enough for a quilt. 

 

My blocks are 7" square.  I wrote about the construction technique using the Rapid Fire LeMoyne Star ruler in last week's post. 

 

Head over to Kim's blog to see more Scrap Basket Sunday projects. 

 

Say YES To The Dress

I moved my Pretty Dresses quilt off the back burner and am focused on finishing the quilting.  I'm doing this one by hand, so naturally it takes some time.  However, I think it's time I finished up.  I started work on this quilt in January, 2012, and began tackling the quilting last summer while watching the Olympics on TV. 

I quilted some definition into the dresses and cross-hatched the background, which makes the dress pop off the background. 

 

I'm working on the border now and am about one-third of the way around.  I had a stencil for this spiral design that both fit the border width and fit with the design (sort of thread unwinding from a spool - well, if you imagine it really hard!). 

 

I still need to decide what to quilt in the sashing.  I'm looking forward to having this one finished and up on the wall in my sewing room.

 

 

Scrap Basket Sunday - Week 1

I have some progress to share on Scrap Basket Sunday.

Last Sunday, I told you about my decision to join Kim's Scrap Basket Sunday sew-along.  I'm making LeMoyne star blocks out of fabrics left from my Fig Tree Quilts projects.

Here is my test block.  It came out pretty well if I do say so myself; look at how those points match in the center!

 

My blocks will be 7 inches square, finished.  I chose this size pretty much at random, not having a final vision for the layout of the quilt in mind yet.  It just seemed a good size for the scale of the prints I will be using. 

 

I am using a tool called the Rapid Fire LeMoyne Star ruler, designed by Deb Tucker.  The special construction technique using this ruler allows you to strip piece units and assemble the block without any Y seams.  So far, so good; my blocks have come together easily and accurately.  The block above has been trimmed to size.    Deb's video tutorial for the block is here; she does a better job of explaining it than I can.  The ruler comes with illustrated directions for use which I found very easy to follow.

 

I bought my ruler a couple of years ago at a quilt show.  Deb Tucker was vending at the show.  What a dynamo!  She has a lot of very original ideas for easier construction of traditional blocks.

 

In the directions, she gives the option of pressing the final seams in one direction or pressing them open.  I decided to give both a try.  I pressed the seams in my first block (above) to the side and that worked well, then I tried pressing the seams open on the next block.  That worked even better so that's how I am proceeding.

My three finished blocks, hanging on my design wall. 

Go over to Kim's place to check out the other scrap basket projects.