Dresden Orange

Day 277: With our plans for a Sisters-of-the-Heart Quilting Bee disrupted by the pandemic, I found myself getting too far along on Mousie's grandmother's Dresden plate quilt, so to ensure that we have enough to do when it becomes possible for them to come for a visit, I laid it aside and picked up where I left off piecing my own version of Dresden plate. My desire to make an orange quilt date back at least forty years. At one time, I had an appreciable stash of orange-themed prints set aside, but later disposed of them when I thought my quilting days were done. Oh, yes, I've kicked myself many times for that foolish move, believe me! A couple of years ago, the idea resurfaced and I began accumulating appropriate fabrics, although at the time, I hadn't settled on a design. Eventually, a twenty-blade Dresden plate won the toss, although Memory Wreath (one of my favourite patterns) was running a close second. I decided on a chocolate-brown base fabric for the blocks to give the whole quilt an autumnal feel, with yellow centers in the plates, perhaps repeating as "streets and alleys" between the blocks. Today, I will be piecing the last two plates, leaving four to be appliqued to the base fabric. As for the "streets and alleys," well, it looks like this project will also have to go on hold until COVID leaves the building. Not to worry! There's always a Plan B in any experienced crafter's closet.

Sunflower Season Dresden Plate

Day 340: For some reason, I'm on a quilting jag. I have one row to go on a fully machine-made Cathedral Window before I can start setting cats in the "windows," so in the interest of keeping the spirit alive, I made a sample Dresden Plate block using blue scraps. I was so pleased with the way it turned out that I decided the time had arrived: at long last, I'd sew the orange quilt I've been threatening to make since the 1970s.

Now it has to be said that when I start assembling quilt blocks, I find it much more difficult to keep the placement of the pieces random than setting them in order. Ironically, it is that very randomness that I find most appealing in quilts. I spent a lot of time sick when I was a kid, usually nursing a sore throat and a fever beneath the Double Wedding Ring quilt my great-grandmother made as a wedding gift for my mom and dad. She'd pieced it from cotton flour sacks. I would amuse myself by "walking" the Double Wedding Ring path with my fingers, attempting to find two or more pieces of the same print. Most of the time, it was easy, but there were one or two prints which had only been used for a single wedge. Those were my treasures, those singletons, and by the time I'd recovered from one malaise only to come down with another, I'd have forgotten exactly which ones they were, and the process of finding them could start all over again.

While there won't be any singles in my "Sunflower Season" Dresden Plate quilt, I am still striving for randomness. It's easy to build an ordered universe, not quite so simple to create a chaotic one.