What to finish in January?

   

Although I haven't got many UFO's (Dresden plate quilt, stamp collection quilt and Grandmother's garden quilt plus my millennium cross stitch sampler)  I am linking up with A lovely year of finishes with Melissa from Sew bitter sweet and Shanna at Fiber of all sorts and Lynne at Never to hot to stitch for her 2013 the year of the finished project. This is because I have several large projects planned for this year including a double wedding ring quilt to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary and a quilt for a couple of our friends who celebrate their anniversary on the same day. So between starting new projects each month with  Barbara at Cat Patches and finishing one a month with Melissa at Sew Bitter Sweet and Lynne at Never to Hot to Stitch I should end the year with a nice cuddly pile of completed quilts.

The project I want to finish this month is my Dresden Plate Quilt. John, my DH, bought me the kit in October 2011 when we visited the Stitching and Knitting Exhibition at Alexandra Palace, London.  When I started my blog last April I started work on this quilt having not done any quilting for  over 20 years and never having made this block.

The quilt was designed by Maggie Wise and is made in Liberty Tana Lawns and white cotton. The pattern contained a paper template for the blades and I cut a copy of the template in acrylic. This made the cutting out much easier but still rather stressful.

The blades are appliquéd on by machine using the buttonhole stitch. This was also used to stitch the centre on. I found this very tiring on the eyes and the back but at least there were only nine blocks to make. The sashing and the borders are made using one and a half inch squares of the lawn. I cut the fabric into strips of one and half inch wide and sewed them together before cutting the resulting strip into one and a half inch pairs. These pairs were then sewn together randomly to make the border.

The corner stones in the sashing are white.

The nine blocks have now been pieced together with the sashing and in order to finish the top I need to make the two borders. I will then be able to quilt the top and try to finish by the end of January. I will in fact be very happy if I get to the point of being ready to start the quilting and any further will be the icing on the cake.

So Planned finish for January is the Dresden plate quilt and my planned start? I've been giving this a lot of thought and I think I want to make a start on the double wedding ring quilt. I could do this using fusible appliqué but I want to try using paper piecing which is something I've never tried. I'm a wiz at English paper piecing but this is slightly different. I'll let you know how I get on.

Starting Monday 7th January Madame Samm at Sew We Quilt has organised a blog hop called 'In your words'. The button is on the side bar, why not pop over and see what people have created.