Seeing Red . . . .

Have you seen the September/October issue of McCall's Quilting?

What do you think of that Dresden quilt on the cover?

I love it! What a great idea, to use red as the background fabric for those blocks. I really like the contrast between the light floral prints and that fantastic red. Don't like red? You could use any color as a background I suppose, blue, green, whatever suits your fancy. But you know me and I fancy red!!

Not only do I love the red background, I love the three different sizes of plates.

I don't have much in the way of floral fabric with a light background. Almost all the fabric in my stash has a colored background. This will require some shopping.

The pattern is called Dresden Doilies and is designed by Gerri Robinson. (there's a kit available on her website, Planted Seeds Designs) She has a pattern in almost every McCalls Quilting magazine. My Red White and Wonderful quilt was a Gerri Robinson pattern.

This quilt finishes at around 60" x 60", what a nice size.

The instructions provided by Gerri call for glueing the plates and center circles to the background fabric then quilting. I'm not so sure about that, have you ever tried such a thing? Wouldn't that center circle ravel over time if the edges weren't turned down?

Even if I have to hand stitch those plates and center circles on, I still love this quilt. It's been ages since I saw a pattern in a quilt magazine that I liked well enough to tear out and file in my pattern binder. I was just about ready to let this subscription expire, I may have to hang on a little longer.

Current Project Update.

So I'm working on this Red and White Tribute Quilt, and I thought some little red school houses would look good so I sat down with my pencil and paper, did some cyphering, and came up with a plan for making 4 1/2 inch blocks.

Up until this point, the math part of this project has been one of the things that I've really enjoyed. I had no problems whatsoever with the main structure of the school house, but that roof line was another matter entirely.

This was probably my worst attempt . .

Now this is one perfect roof.

Trouble is, it took me NINE attempts before I got that perfect roof.

The first roof I actually tried to piece using templates that I made, not even close!

I then figured I would "just draw" the roof and paper piece it. The second roof, how did that happen!! My first lesson in mirror imaging when drawing a pattern to be paper pieced. I guess I could have made all the houses facing west instead of east, but I've NEVER seen them that way in a quilt so I figured I better draw the roof backwards.

The problem was getting that white diagonal strip to match perfectly with the white horizontal strip in the house.

Now it's down to a few more blocks and a few chimneys and I'll be good to go.

I'm thinking you'll see a finished school house quilt this week, stop back by.

Note to Ann from basket blog - basket blocks with corner triangles finished at 11 1/2 inches!