One Last Finish - Modern Dresden Wreaths

What a great way to finish the year...with a bright Christmasy modern wreath wall hanging.

The striped fabric had been sitting on or near my cutting table for a long time (like more than two years!). I knew I wanted to make something festive with it and had pulled a number of other stash pieces to go with it, and finally a couple of weeks ago, the urge to make some modern dresdens hit.

Interestingly enough, the original dresden, made from the stripe and a cream print, didn't even make it into the final project. I had peppermint candy in mind when I started, but as the bright lime greens and vivid reds took over, there just wasn't room for anything else. It was really fun to sew strips together, cut the dresden pieces, and sew, not being quite sure what the final result would look like. I can see someday making a bigger quilt playing with the possibilities. It was lots of fun.

Each one is raw edge appliqued to the background fabric using a machine blanket stitch. It needed a little something more so the lighter green circles were added. The quilting on this was fun although it was hard to decide what to do.

Each of the small circles was quilted with a snowflake and the big dresdens were quilted with an asterisk with lots of extra lines.

The stripes and the narrow background piece were quilted with straight(ish) vertical lines.

I wanted to quilt more on the background but I feared overdoing it so I stopped while things were looking good. The backing is a fabric that I considered ugly so I turned it over and used the wrong side. Take that, ugly fabric! I like the way the green thread looks on the back, although it looks a bit yellow in these pictures.

When I was growing up, I was always told that whatever you were doing on New Year's Eve is what you would be doing a lot of the next year. So I'm all set to create, experiment with design, and FINISH lots of quilts next year.

Hooray for a finish, especially a bright fun one; hooray for a blog to share it all, and hooray for readers like you who take time to read and comment. I am thankful for you all.