Day 66 – Dresden Daisies

Let’s take another traditional block and turn it into a quilting filler design! Today’s inspiration is a Dresden plate block and when stitched free motion it becomes Dresden Daisies:

Do you have any idea what day today is? It’s day 66 which means that we officially only have 299 days to go!

I don’t know about you, but 299 sounds a lot more comforting (and less intimidating) than 300.

I’ve previously avoided knowing how many days I had left because whenever I thought about it too much my hands would start to sweat and my heart palpitate.

With how well the first 65 days have gone, I now have no worry at all about the next 300!

I firmly believe that it takes 50 days to really learn anything well. It definitely took me at least that long to learn that stitching on busy, bright fabric is a bad idea if you want your stitches to show up on camera.

So you can expect the next 299 days to be much more visible as I’ve just sliced and diced a nice batch of solid black, red, green, blue and purple from my stash, and maroon from a friend (thanks Dee!)

I seem to be the only quilter in existence that’s looking for solid fabrics, but I stumbled across Michael Miller’s Krystal collection tonight and may have to break my fabric piggy bank so I can dive in with both feet.

This is a beautiful collection of fabrics that almost appear hand dyed. I guess we would describe it as “mottled?”

Regardless, I think it will work perfectly on camera, which is currently my only requirement of fabric. I plan to treat myself to 5 yards of this red wine color to make another kimono jacket.

When in doubt, always wear red!

Okay, enough exposition, let’s get back to Dresden Daisies:

Inspiration – Yes, this is inspired by a traditional Dresden plate block, of which I am very familiar. The raffle quilt I quilted last spring sported 20 Dresden plate blocks surrounding appliqued flower baskets.

While I’ve not been much of a fan of the block before I quilted Baskets in Bloom, I learned to like them better while quilting them.

Design Family – Edge to Edge. This design will work great in open areas like sashing, but not very easily in tight, complicated areas.

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. This design is fairly easy to master because the daisy shapes build upon themselves very naturally. This is also a design that we often doodle, so chances are you can already draw the shape quite easily.

Directional Texture – Two directions. This design has a definite horizontal or vertical direction.

Suggestions for Use – I would most certainly put this in the sashing of a baby blanket or around the edge of a quilt near the binding.

It’s a very simple finish, but can definitely add a little extra detail to a quilt where ever it’s placed.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day