Drummer Boy Dresdens: Week 9 (finished quilt top!)
This post is part of the Drummer Boy Dresdens Sew-Along! See all posts.
Happy Monday, friends! Today is the last week of our summer sew-along. I have a finished quilt top to show you! But first, some tips for joining your blocks.
Week 9 Goal
Join Blocks
When you’re ready to join your Drummer Boy Dresdens blocks, you might ask yourself, “What about the extra background fabric under the appliqué?”
Oooh, good question! Traditional appliqué calls for removing under layers of fabrics so that the work doesn’t become thicker and heavier than necessary. If you’d like to, you can cut away the background fabric that is located under your dresden appliqué. This will yield quite a lot of low volume background scraps which could be handy for your next scrap quilt! Be sure to remove those background sections before you join blocks.
Wanting to keep it simple? You can totally leave the background fabric in place. In this busy season, I decided to leave the backgrounds fully intact. This makes the quilt a bit heavier overall, which I think is a nice feature for a quilt. My favorite lap quilt happens to be my heaviest one too.
Joining Tips:
Join blocks with a true (or generous) 1/4” seam allowance, not a scant 1/4”. This will ensure you have adequate seam allowances even with multiple fabric layers.
Don’t forget to chain piece. Ever the time saver!
Join rows with a walking foot attachment. A walking foot ensures even feeding as you sew through these thicker blocks.
Use pins, lots of pins! You don’t have to pin when joining blocks, but definitely pin when joining rows. Pin at each block seam intersection and in between seams as well. Lucky me, I had a little helper!
And here is my Finished Top!
Yay! All those quarter dresdens look just like sunshine, don’t they? They certainly brought scrappy joy to my summer and I hope they did the same to yours!
Wondering where to find fabrics like these? I can recommend all of the fabric shops you’ll find right here. If you save the leftovers from all your projects, they’re perfect for a scrappy work like this. To anchor it all, I used a consistent fabric for the dresden quarters, inspired by Joy Martin who used the same perfect metallic confetti print for her original Drummer Boy Dresden.
Brandon and I took these photos right outside our apartment building. From my bedroom window/sewing table I look out on this fantastic view. I can’t get over the lily pads, which haven’t grown naturally anywhere that I’ve lived before. What seems so exotic to me is everyday here in The Netherlands.
We’ll be living in this apartment for another month, before closing on the home we are purchasing. It’s fun to spend some time getting to know this part of the city. Suddenly, I’ve become a city girl. I prefer this to our time in the country earlier this month. Change is energizing.
