Is there a better month than June? It’s not too hot, there aren’t too many mosquitoes and the whole summer stretches before you.
I live at the northern edge of wheat country and the wheat is gorgeous this time of year. I snapped the shot above on my morning walk yesterday. This is hard red winter wheat, and it will be harvested probably in July. Everything is late this year because it’s been cool and wet.
I fell hard for Dresden Plate about 10 years ago and there’s no hint that this love affair will end any time soon. I offer a lecture and a workshop and they’re very different but both are a lot of fun. I wanted to share a few of the quilts with you.
All Drezzed Up by Diane Harris
All Drezzed Up is the quilt that started it all. I bought 20 vintage Dresden Plate blocks for 20 dollars at an antique mall in Ogallala, Nebraska. Their points were raw-edged, and if I had known more about Dresdens at the time I might have left them behind.
Partial seams strike fear in the hearts of quilters but it needn’t be. Let me help you understand the idea with a Valentine quilt I finished this week.
I’m making a quilt of my own design that will become part of two guild programs,* but it’s not going well. I’m undecided about what to do. I know what I should do but I’m unwilling to do it.
This is it. It’s actually prettier than it looks here even if it is giving me fits. The biggest problem is this:
My lifetime adventures with Baby Windmills have led to quite a few quilt designs. Some of them have been sewn and some are still only on paper.
Christmas Dance by Diane Harris. Photo: Kristen Laing Photography.
The first designs were just sewing blocks together using a particular color recipe. Nice little scrap quilts like Christmas Dance, above, but pretty simplistic.
I posted an image of my recent modern Christmas wreath quilt on Instagram, and a follower named Karen saw “urban-industrial style Christmas.” What a great description!
Oh, Christmas Wreath by Diane Harris; quilted by Julie Lechner @beenquiltin
Her thoughts moved me to play around with this design and purposely go for an industrial look. So I moved away from Christmas entirely, to these possibilities.
A little bit different, but it still feels like the same quilt. Sashing is wider and all of the background and the border is one color.
Here I moved to a darker background color. I kind of like this idea. In terms of fabric, I’d use a lot of variety in the Bow Ties. (Ha, they don’t even look like Bow Ties now!)
More playing around. I’m not sure how effective this really is. But you never know until you try, so I don’t rule anything out when I’m experimenting, especially if it’s just in EQ. Even in fabric, play is the name of the game.
Whoa. This happened by accident! The background is the same color as one of the Bow Ties, so that piecing disappears and they look like weird C’s. Now we’re getting somewhere. In reality you wouldn’t actually piece the C’s, you could just use a solid patch in the same fabric as the background. I love this one, and surprisingly, it looks Christmas-y to me once more.
I had one more thought. I changed the gray to another green.
Like I said, you never know until you mess around!
A note about Electric Quilt design software: I resisted upgrading to EQ8 from EQ7 because I thought I didn’t have time to learn a new program. But when I did upgrade, I was blown away by how easy and intuitive it is. I spent almost zero time learning EQ8 because everything felt natural and logical. I love it. If you’re interested in designing quilts, you should get it. Well worth the investment!
Today, I wish you the courage, the curiosity and the commitment to play.
I had a great group of students for a “Let’s Play Drezzup” workshop in Indiana earlier this summer. And I had a new experience with the GPS on my iPhone when it got me totally lost and I was very late for the class I was teaching. I was mortified but the quilters were so nice about it and our day together was terrific after that.
You never know what kind of fabrics people will bring, but the surprises are often wonderful. This quilter had fabrics from her mother’s stash! Aren’t those vintage prints amazing?
At the very beginning of summer, I drove to Lafayette, Indiana to share a trunk show of scrap quilts and teach a class on Dresden Plate. It was delightful! One of the quilters in the class emailed with big news last week, and it reminded me to blog about the Common Threads Quilt Guild.
This cool old barn was in the same parking lot as their meeting place in Lafayette, at a spot called Jenk’s Rest. I love old cupolas and someday I’m going to have one in my yard.
Happy mail arrived this week! The newest Modern Patchwork, in which I have a quilt. I’m really pleased to be included.
It’s my first time in Modern Patchwork. You’ll find the July/August issue on newsstands by Tuesday, June 26.
One of the sweetest quilts I ever came across is a Sunbonnet Sue baby quilt from the 30’s or 40’s. I’m not usually a fan of silly Sue, but this one was so charming that I couldn’t leave it behind.
I love the rectangular blocks. They’re more interesting than square blocks. And notice that Sue has a friend. Or maybe she’s a twin. There are two Sues on each block. I love the solid colors used for each little girl. They’re so cheerful.