Dresden Challenge

The official quilt.

 Earlier this month I finished my dresden quilt for the Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild's dresden challenge. I started working on the dresdens for this quilt back in May I think. I made one or 2 dresdens at a time in between working on other projects. And slowly but surely this quilt was made.

 

Isaac likes it.

 I'm not much for making a quilt without a purpose. I enjoy quilting but we already have plenty of blankets for TV watching etc. But we needed a new quilt for our guest bed so I decided this challenge was perfect for guest bed. It is a full size quilt and is by far the largest quilt I've made. It was difficult to work with so much fabric but I got it done :) I used a sheet as the base for my applique on the top and as the back. Simple is good for me.

I chose to do raw-edge, flat dresdens in various sizes in a random layout. It evolved a lot from the much more structured plan I had in my head when I started this project. I love how it turned out. I did all of the quilting myself. I'm pretty proud of that. It's not perfect by any means but I think it's the best quilting I've done so far so I'm pleased. I bought a quilting frame in large part to quilt this quilt. It will come in handy for quilting other quilts in the future too. I used a design from the free motion quilting project blog. Can't remember the name at the moment though.

 

Close up of the quilting.

He deems it cuddle worthy.

It doubles as a great fort!

So now this quilt is on our guest bed bunched on the couch where it was thrown after the photo shoot. It has already been used once by my father in law and it will be ready for my mom when she arrives in a week and a half. It will get lots of use and it makes me happy every time I walk past the guest bedroom. All in all a quality project.

This one is for you Bridget...

So Bridget wants people to blog more. I get that. My excuse (not that I need an excuse not to blog) is that at the end of a long, often hard day the last thing I want to do is tell the world about that long hard day. I know that it is cathartic to some people to write about their day. I'm just not one of those people. I've never been much of a journal keeper because I end up looking back at what I write and feel stupid.

I do however want to start blogging more about my quilting. I would really love to make my quilting into a business. I feel like blogging about quilting would help get my business out there. Problem is that all of that requires a lot of time and commitment. I don't have enough of either at the time. I would really love to get things started now but having an Isaac makes that difficult, really difficult. I'm sure having another child or two will make that even more difficult so for the moment I'm working it all out in my mind and biding my time. Hopefully it will be sooner than later that I take the leap.

Until then I'll be plenty busy doing a lot of this...

My boy loves him some dirt.

 

And rocks.

He's been "helping"us do some decluttering.

  A few weeks ago I was feeling like our home was just so cluttered. We have so many things and we are blessed to have everything that we need and so many things that we want but it was just taking over. It's no good to feel like you're outgrowing your house when it's plenty large and there are only 3 in your family. So we've been sorting, donating, recycling, and trashing lots of things. It feels great!

My new quilting frame. Now that I'm getting the hang of it I like it :)