This month the Island Batik Ambassadors were challenged to create Dresden Plate quilts. I have always loved Dresden Plate quilts and I knew I wanted to make something a little different than a traditional setting. For this project I received the Tropical Bliss collection by Kathy Engle for Megan Best of Bestquilter. I also pulled out my Dresden Plate die from Accuquilt!
When designing this quilt I knew I wanted to have a planned fabric grouping in each of the fans instead of random. With all the gorgeous creams and teals in the collection I knew it would be fun to use them in different fans throughout the quilt. Then I had to decide what else to do. I decided to use this gorgeous burgundy as the background and when I looked at what I had remaining there were two busy prints that combined all the colors. I decided to make them into nine patches to tie the quilt all together.
Look at these gorgeous fabrics. Aren't the turtles fun? Working with them made me feel like I was on a tropical vacation when I was ironing fabric with my Oliso iron. I pieced the quilt with my favorite Aurifil 50 weight thread and Schmetz Microtex Needles of course. I then layered it with my favorite Hobbs 80/20 batting.
As I was quilting my quilt I decided I wanted to use the lighter pink squares to do some quilting that showed in turquoise. I mimicked the Dresden shape in the quilting. I'm happy with how this little detail turned out. You can also see the feathers in the burgundy background that I quilted in all of the background.
I wanted to quilt minimally in the fans themselves, so I did wavy lines coming from the center of the fan going out on each teal point. I like how it looks like it's exploding from the middle.
Island Batik is offering a giveaway this week for the blog hop! Here is the Rafflecopter link.
