patternless – Knit-Spin-Quilt

EZ-Dresden Mini Quilt

This quilt is my entry in the EZ Dresden Challenge:

I considered trying to do a queen-sized traditional Dresden quilt and then decided that, really, I’d like to come out of August with my sanity intact. So I took the little mini-Dresden medallion I’d made up for practice, added a larger one and some fans, and ended up with this:

I’m pleased that this fabric set worked so nicely together: it was a lot of fun to play with it, and I was really pleased when I could cut out a little teacup and have it be just the right size for the center of the medallion.

I’m proud of the way some of the spokes line up:

Though there are spots where they don’t line up quite as well as I might have hoped:

The fans in the corners aren’t perfect, but I think they came out pretty well:

I’m proud of the way the quilting looks on the back of it, though I’m sorry I didn’t go get more fabric: the seam is more distracting than I expected:

Still, it’s going to hang on a wall (see the little corners?) so I suppose the back won’t get all that much attention:

And one more shot of the whole thing:

Now I have a question for all of you who have made Dresden quilts before: do you find rounded or pointed spokes easier to make? I found the pointed ones much easier than the fans, and I’m wondering if there’s a way to round the edges that I didn’t think of.

Better photograph of the Scrap Attack quilt

I finally pressed it, (not that you can entirely tell: the light green fabric is a little cranky) and it’s all ready to quilt and bind. Then, of course, I have to decide who to give it to. It’ll probably sit on a shelf for a little while until a baby or a birthday comes along.

(More information about the fabric and so on is here.)

Scrap Attack quilt top finished!

Well, it looks like my worries about not finishing in time for Monday’s deadline were unfounded. I finished the top of my scrap quilt just now.

The fabric is almost entirely scraps from the Nine-Patch quilt. I had three central squares worth of strips, and pieced the fourth central square out of the edges and scraps from making the other squares. The greys all came from a scrap pack from FabricWorm, which I’m glad I impulse ordered a few weeks ago: without it I would have had a much harder time making anything even remotely quilt-sized. The only things I pulled from my fabric stash are the charcoal sashing and the green pezzy prints for one border.

It’s about 45×45″ though I imagine it’ll lose a tiny bit of size when it’s quilted.

I’m planning to bind it in the same charcoal that I used for sashing. I honestly have no idea what I’m going to use for a backing, but I suppose I have time to figure that out.

On Monday, I’ll go back to the Simple Math quilt, and what happens when the person you’re making the quilt for says “Oh, by the way, can you make it a full instead of a twin?”

Quilt along and scrap challenge

What’s this?

It looks an awful lot like I’m participating in this:

When I first saw this Scrap Attack Quilt-Along I thought there was no way I’d have enough scraps to do anything with. But minis/baby quiltes are okay, so I’m going to go for it. I’m using scraps from the Nine Patch Lattice Quilt a couple of solids and neutrals from a scrap pack I bought from FabricWorm and a little bit of blue leftover from the solid colored blocks I’m adding to the Simple Math quilt.

I’m not really planning this out in advance, other than basing it around nine patch squares. This is a bit odd for me: usually I want to know everything about a pattern well before I start, and exactly how things go together. It turns out it’s kind of nice to just throw a few pieces of fabric together, add something else to the edges and see how it works. I’m figuring on doing four blocks and (if I have enough scraps of it) using the navy cotton as sashing. Backing I’ll figure out later — all you have to have finished is the quilt top, not the quilting, backing and binding.

I’m just hoping I can get it all done by the deadline for Scrap Attack: next Monday! Eeeek!