The Giant Dahlia Begins

Fri, May 9th - 2:15PM

The Giant Dahlia begins!!

Well, I haven't had a chance to sew a thing since retreat (you would be amazed how long it takes to put fabric online!) :( But I did get my Giant Dahlia cut out at retreat, so I'm going to get cracking on that...when? Who knows. The future in-laws are here this weekend, so I'll have to entertain instead of sew, but what can you do? Anyway, the first step is of course to choose your colors and cut it out and this is the combo I came up with (apologies for the lighting, it was raining when I took the pictures, so it's kind of gloomy light).

I am finally going to make a quilt for MY bed. The only quilt that fits my bed is a rag quilt that I made when I first strarted quilting. I hate it. It's a trapezoid, for one thing, so it only fits in the loosest sense of the word, and in colors I hate, and I believe it actually quadruples my cats' shedding capacity.

Any other queen + quilts I've made I've given away, so I finally decided that I was going to make this one, and no one would take it from me! I love bright colors: orange, lime green, blues, and yellows especially, so this one will be oranges and yellows with green 'leaves' around the outside edge, and a very pale lime green background.

The worst part of a dahlia is not the curved seams, trust me! I really like Marti Michell's method and rotary cutter templates, but the cost of accuracy and ease in the rest of the quilts is the dreaded M-word (okay, maybe only I dread it, but it's marking). You have to mark your pieces. You really don't have to mark every single dot, but I do, because once I start, I get anal. Her templates have holes in them. I like to mark with something permanent. Why, you ask? Because my last dahlia, I marked with a very fine metallic pen that I had on hand so that it barely showed. Well, it bled bright pink! Joy, oh joy, so the white center of my other dahlia has pink streaks. I also don't like watersoluble because I find it's hard to see on many colors, for one thing, and if I decide I want to Best Press or spray part while I'm working, POOF, all my marking is gone! I prefer a very fine point Pigma Pen (made by Sakura, archival, used in scrapbooking a lot) and, to those of you who know me, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I'm using lime green. I don't like to use black, on the off chance I sew a seam incorrectly and it ends up on the front of the quilt, a dot of green is bearable, a dot of black will really stand out. So I try to go with a color that won't show too much. This is ultimately what the markings look like:

You can see they are very tiny! Bear in mind that when I whine about marking (I whine about a lot of things, but mostly, ironing, pinning, and marking), it really doesn't take very long. I lay out all sixteen of one size on my cutting table (or kitchen table, or any flat surface) and just hop from one to the next, and I can mark a whole group of petals in 5 minutes. So total it probably takes me about an hour. And it is definitely worth it! It really goes together nicely if you line up the marks.

I'll be keeping you posted on the Dahlia's progress as I go...Next week I go to Quilt Market in Portland, OR, so hopefully I'll find lots of fun new gadgets, patterns, and fabrics to share! I'll be sure and take lots of pictures.

Happy Quilting!