When you are a beginner quilter, it’s common to find yourself running into issues, reading a pattern wrong, cutting something a little too small, and it can be discouraging! But today is all about how quilting mistakes happen to everyone, no matter what your skill level is, and how projects will still always come out beautiful regardless, and I hope that it will give you a bit of encouragement and the motivation to finish that project! 

With today’s post I wanted to try something a little different than my usual post style. Today I wanted to give you a peak into my sewing room and see what projects I’m working on lately. 

What’s the quilt top look like, is it anywhere close to being finished, whats going right, and what’s going wrong?

When all you see on the internet is beautifully photographed, seemingly perfect quilts, it’s easy to get discouraged about your own projects. So today I’m dishing out all the details on my current projects to encourage you in your own project and show you that a perfect quilt is rare, no matter how pretty the pictures are.

Making quilting mistakes doesn’t make you a bad quilter, it happens to everyone, and even if you aren’t in love with the finished project, more often than not, you still learned something along the way.

Besides, 9 out of 10 quilters agree, a finished quilt is better than a perfect quilt.

Project #1: The Dresden

About a year ago right before COVID started, I had switched positions at my day job to a position that does some occasional travel for the company. Right after I transitioned, they told me “Make sure you have a passport because you’re going to Germany in a couple months”.

Obviously I was super excited to go abroad, and I started thinking about things to bring back from my travels. 

I’m a bit of a minimalist though when it comes to souvenirs while traveling. I often try to find meaningful souvenirs instead of tchotchkes that you find in a souvenir shop, that way I don’t end up with a junk drawer full of keychains or snow globes from random places. 

So on this trip to Germany I was determined to create a new quilt pattern with German heritage and make the pattern using fabric I bought in Germany on the trip! I then patted myself on the back for coming up with such a brilliant plan, and went to work designing a pattern I was excited to get started on. 

Then COVID hit and the trip ultimately got cancelled. Which was sad. 

But I already had the pattern planned out and ready to go, so while the souvenir quilt is still in TBD status, I went ahead and picked up the Folktale fabric line from Moda instead to test this pattern out!

Current State/Still Todos

This project has been on hold for a bit as the weather has been warming up and house projects have been taking priority, but I’m in the middle of custom quilting it and hope to be finished in the next week or two! 

I really liked the look of mini Dresden plates since I feel like they aren’t super common, and it gave me the opportunity to practice my hand at custom FMQ designs in the negative space between the plates. 

Currently for this project I’ve finished the quilt top and am a good portion of the way through the quilting. I’m using a mixture of straight line quilting and free motion quilting in the motif and its definitely coming along!

I’ve finished up all the straight line quilting between the plates, and just finished up the free motion quilting, next I have plans to do some matchstick quilting around the outside edges, and then it’ll be all set to square up and bind! 

Quilting Mistakes So Far

Since I’m really happy with how this quilt is turning out so far, instead of saying “quilting mistakes” I’m going to rephrase and go with “learning opportunity” 😛

Every quilt you make you tend to learn many things about how you prefer to do something, or what choice was silly causing you to take twice as long to complete the step. Often times, you learn ways how not to make that quilt or quilt block. 

The two lessons I’ve learned in this quilt so far both relate more to the free motion quilting than the piecing.

1. The density of your quilting has the ability to make or break your quilting motifs. 

2. If you are using two presser feet to quilt with on one project, try to complete all quilting with one foot before switching to the other. 

While I love how the quilt is turning out, there are a few things I would change in the quilting motif if I did this same design again. In the quilted chain, I would removed the center line leaving a larger unquilted space connecting plates. 

As I look at it, I feel like I’ve been too good about maintaining my density. When you use larger spaced out designs next to tight little fillers, it makes the larger designs pop in the quilting. By keeping everything relatively similar in how much space is between quilted lines, everything just fades into itself and you lose the design you actually want to see in everything else. 

All in all its a small thing, but something I will keep in mind on the next quilt. Most definitely not getting ripped out now, and I’m not so unhappy with it that I want to go through the effort to add denser quilting in other places.

My second lesson I’ve learned through this quilt, is when you are using multiple presser feet to quilt with, use one foot before the other. Don’t switch back and forth. 

I liked the idea of finishing a full section and then moving on, which required me to continuously switch back and forth between my walking foot and my free motion quilting foot. 

Which took way more time than I realized and made me never want to work on the quilt.

In my opinion, the worst quilting mistakes you can make are the ones that lead to unfinished projects. So when that was what was happening to me, I knew I had to change up my strategy and I started only working with one foot at a time.

Once I decided to start with one foot, quilt everything on the quilt I needed using that foot, and then switch, I felt like I was finally making progress on the quilting at a significantly faster rate which kept my motivation high to keep going within a single quilting session. 

That project I was avoiding became exciting again to finish.

How to Make Your Own 

While the top is simple, it gives a lot of negative space real estate to practice free motion quilting which I’m loving. 

If you like this pattern and would be interested in it becoming a pattern for sale in the quilt shop, be sure to let me know in the comments below and I can get to work on a written pattern!

Project #2: Another DWR 

Another wedding, another DWR! A close friend is getting married this fall and what better gift to give her than a double wedding ring!

This one is going to be very similar to one I made a couple years back for my sister-in-law, except I expanded the pattern to make it a good size throw instead of the smallish size throw that the last one was.

I secretly worked with the groom-to-be to pick out the perfect color set that she’s going to love and we landed on the collection Cider by Moda. 

To make this quilt easy for him choose colors for, I went with one of my favorite color selection strategies, curated collections. 

Cider is a curated collection manufactured by Moda and is specially made to have the perfect color and pattern combos all in one package, no thinking required. 

This is hands down one of my favorite ways to pick colors for a quilt because “Indecision” happens to be my middle name, so I like that it keeps me from spending way too many hours trying to select my own colors.

Especially when it’s not even for me in the long run. 

Current State

This project is currently in the very early stages of its quilting life, the final design is settled on, and the fabrics are chosen, I only have a couple of tools to grab for the paper piecing before getting started. 

Paper piecing? Yup, it’s actually the easiest (and fastest) way I’ve found to make this quilt. The first DWR I made I fast tracked the learning curve and took an online class for DWR quilts. By following all the hacks/tricks/tips in the Craftsy class Contemporary Curves, it made the process so simple that I was cruising through rings left and right.

Once I get started on this project I’ll be going back through the class to brush up on the techniques and I’ll be done in no time. 

If DWR’s are on your quilting “Todo” list, be sure to check out the class Contemporary Curves before getting started. 

Quilting Mistakes to Avoid

The project hasn’t really started yet so I don’t really have much in the way of learning opportunities for this yet. 

Although, after completing my first DWR a few years ago, I wrote an article about some of the lessons learned during the process and some quilting mistakes made so here’s a few of the highlights I’m going to be sure to bring forward into this new project:

1. Don’t get overly type A with the rings

2. A 1/4” seam allowance is your best friend

There’s definitely more than two that I’ll be bringing forward, but those are the two that I still clearly remember being the biggest time and effort issues the first time around. 

The first quilt I did I also used a curated fabric collection, and only bought JUST enough to finish the quilt with, and it had an odd amount of fabrics compared to the amount of segments in each ring. 

Everyone gets a little TOO into their quilt design sometimes right? Last DWR that was me. I needed the rings to be perfectly scrappy, no two fabrics in the same ring, no two rings ending in the same fabric right next to each other. 

I spent far too much time planning out each individual ring to get perfectly optimized patterns. An effort that no one but me would EVER recognize. 

This time I gave myself plenty of wiggle room in yardage, and more fabrics/patterns to play with. This way I’ll be able to standardize the rings, spend less time puzzle piecing fabrics together, and more time sewing (or not sewing and enjoying the summer instead :P)

The 1/4” seam allowance goes without saying too much. Last DWR I couldn’t care less about a consistent seam allowance and worried more about just getting the quilt done in time (Don’t judge it was my second quilt ever haha). Block sizes ended up all over the place and I had to fudge fabric bulk left and right when I was assembling the top. 

Over the last few years I’ve learned a lot and started valuing the benefits of maintaining a 1/4” seam allowance, and even have a few tips and tricks now to make it easier. I made a TON of quilting mistakes the last time I made this pattern, and while the quilt still turned out beautiful, it made the process harder than it should have been. This time around I plan on making the effort to keep a 1/4” seam allowance (even with the curves) to hopefully avoid the tediousness and finish the project much quicker!

How to Make Your Own

DWR’s are not hard! Curves are not hard! Just different. 

If a DWR has been on your quilting bucket list and you’ve been hesitating to start one, I can not more highly recommend checking out the online course Contemporary Curves from Craftsy. This two hour class gives you everything you need to make this traditionally “difficult” quilt pattern super easy and, dare I say it, fun.

It even gives you everything you need to avoid all the common quilting mistakes associated with curves and DWR’s in general. Even if you are a beginner-of-the-beginners quilter. 

Be sure to take a look at it soon though, Craftsy’s subscription is currently having a 97% off sale so if you are looking for the best resource for DWR’s now’s definitely the time, and you’ll even be able to access all of their other amazing quilting classes while you’re at it. 

Interested in learning more? Check out my review on Contemporary Curves to see all the details for the course, get an idea of the curriculum, and finally have the confidence to tackle your own DWR.