Dilly Dilly Dresdens

the first flowers

Thanks so much for your warm response to my Dilly Dilly quilt idea! It’s definitely a compliment that you would like the pattern for it. My wheels are turning about creating an intermediate level pattern, which would assume familiarity with the patchwork skills of curved improv piecing and partial seams. I wonder if such a pattern would be well-received?

Today I am happy to be cutting and sewing the first flowers for my Dilly Dilly garden. I am using all kinds of purples for the flower petals - both warm and cool ones. This dashed print from the Maeve collection is one of my favorites cool purple tones.

These will be the biggest flowers in the quilt, so that seemed like a good place to start. Rather than going scrappy, I’m carefully choosing two petal prints for each flower. It takes some fine tuning to choose prints that are close enough in value that each flower reads as a whole, but not so exactly the same in value that the petals merge completely together.

I am machine-appliquéing my dresdens with a fine edge stitch. I don’t need to use any stabilizers to avoid puckering or bunching. I wonder if that is an advantage of my semi-professional Juki machine or something that has to do with experience? At any rate, it’s simple and fuss-free this way.

Isn’t this half dresden lovely? I always love that Heather Ross butterfly print. It never fails.

So, my first two finished dresdens! Now that I think about it, I may appliqué the other dresdens after sewing the patchwork foundation together. In that way I can overlap the appliqué with the patchwork seams where desired.

Time to get back to work!