Windham Wednesdays with Fantasy and Uncorked

FIRST: I have my two winners: Aby B. of North Dakota won a hard copy CD of my book. Bonnie B. of Canada won the digital version. Congratulations! And thanks to all of you for your kind words about these quilts!

Now let's talk about some beautiful AND current fabrics. You saw a few of these images before, but I was able to quilt this a few weeks ago and plan on using the finishing steps (binding, rod pocket and label tricks) in an upcoming blog post.

I saw Fantasy back in the Fall of 2019. They were new at Quilt Market and a local shop owner brought some to my guild meeting here in Virginia. I immediately asked Windham (for whom I design and sew on occasion) for some. And this is the fat quarter bundle that came!

Fantasy fabrics by Windham

I already had the blenders called Uncorked by Another Point of View for Windham. (Doesn't that sound like a party theme?)

Uncorked fabrics and my trusty dresden ruler

I began playing with these two collections together in August (click the link to see what I mean). I used an assembly idea from a previous quilt for inspiration. Well, I should say that the assembly idea helped me out of my dilemma of not having enough fabric to make a "normal" quilt setting. I rather like the new look. I call this Disappearing Dresdens.

Disappearing Dresdens

The blocks are 20", but as you can see, I have one whole block and one block that cascades into the whole block. Just imagine the quilt center as three 10" squares by three 10" squares. Two of those squares using the Uncorked fabric are PLAIN with no dresden wedges. That's why I call this approach "descending." The blues and grays are from Uncorked.

Whole, typical Dresden Plate block (20" x 20"

Now, what if I twist one of the 10" units 180 degrees?

Rearranged Dresden Block

I used several Fantasy prints to finish with borders. How can you do this with only fat quarters?

Look again at the quilt:

Uncorked and Fantasy playing very nicely in my summer backyard

I split up the two borders in segments that I could cut from fat quarters. Review: a fat quarter is not what I have around my midriff. It's a cut of fabric that measures 18" x 21"!

I hope you have been inspired today by thinking outside the box when it comes to arranging your quilt blocks. Many of them can be "split" and then turned and twisted to create this descending arrangement. Just add some filler plain squares and even a little triangle in the corner of one unit (which, by the way, was not meant to be on that spot but I didn't notice until the quilt was done. Oh, well!)