Dotty for Dresden

I have a thing for Dresden Wheels, I am not sure why or how but I do, I love them. I have many a quilt in my head with ideas to try just frustrated by lack of time, something I intend on changing in the New Year!

Anyway, I bought this book ages ago just to have, no specific reason. Ideas, patterns, instructions all in one place. I have flicked through it countless times and keep coming back to the one quilt. While I am not keen on the fabrics used on the quilt in the book I love the wheels. Then I saw this collection in a newsletter from Hawthorne Threads and I fell in love. It is the exact palet of the colours in our bedroom... then a plan started hatching...

I spent hours on the Hawthorne website, I love that all the co-ordinating fabrics are listed under the individual fabric and I love that down the bottom of the listing you can click on a colour and there is a selection of toned fabrics in othe collections as well. So thoughtful (and so easy to spend a fortune!).

I spent hours with fabric swatches printed out moving them this way and that.

I spent hours working out how to increase the size to fit us and our bed, my specifications not just a 'queen' or 'king' quilt, I have a definate idea of how I want it to come together.

Then I bit the bullet, took the plunge and placed my order! An anxious 2 weeks later my parcel was delivered! Poor Karen our postie, she was quite shocked at my enthusiasm for the parcel she brought to the front door! I have to say, I am very happy with the service from Hawthorne, they were quick to respond to questions and the parcel was beautifully packaged!

I whipped the camera out and took a few pictures before I put the fabric in the machine to be ready to hang out in the sunshine when I got back from school drop off and a coffee with my fellow quilter in crime Cherry!

The pale turquoise at the back is the backing and sashing fabric, the purple 4 in is for the circles and the other 6 are for the wheels. I am sure I had a different configuration in my head when I ordered them but it's all good and will work out fine!

 Then we worked out how many wedges of each I would need to cut out, thank goodness Mr O is a maths' nerd! 112 of each of the 6 fabrics = 672 wedges! Croikey!

It really didn't take very long at all and the yellow fabric I wasn't so sure about isn't actually too bad!

Then I chain pieced them all! A bit of a mission but it took about 3 hours of solid sewing to do it all.

A big mass of eek!

 Little Miss was in charge of 'cutting at 16' which was a good help, she wanted to do something and this was the 'easiest' job she could do. She was folding the wedges for me but got horribly bored and out of order so a change was good.

Then to 'make it click to husband, who couldn't see how it was going to come together, I made a wheel... So pretty! I actually pushed my luck and made 4 because I knew I wouldn't get to do a whole lot more when I got home. I had planned to snip and turn out the wedges in the car but it was raining so hard and the road wasn't straight I felt a bit ill doing it so I now have a pile of fabric tormenting me but too much work to catch up with of an evening!

So this will be my project for summer. A LOT of hand sewing unfortunately but the satisfaction will be worth it. Stay tuned! I won't update every time I do something but will give progress reports along the way.