Last weekend, we had a sew-in with the Montreal MQG. There was only a few of us. But, we really had a nice day chatting and sewing. I started working on my project for the Riley Blake challenge. It’s a challenge organized by the MQG and for which Riley Blake Designs provided each participants with the same bundle of fat quarters from their Basics collection.

I decided to limit my-self to a pillow for this challenge. I have too much projects going on without enough time to sew. It will be for my son’s bedroom which we plan to redecorate this year. My husband will be making a twin bed to replace his current toddler’s bed. I want to make him a quilt, but for now I’ll focus on a pillow. The room will be in grey with hints of orange and teal. So, I only kept a few prints from the bundle I got from Riley Blake and I added some solids Kona cottons.

The prints from the Basics collection are really geometric. I wanted to play with this for the design. I also wanted something more boyish. I wanted something that would look like a wheel or a gear. I thought the best way to achieve this would be to make a dresden plate. Starting from there, I looked around for ideas. You can find some amazing quilts that inspired me here, here and here. I made a few sketches.

And here is my final design:

Last Saturday, I went to the sew-in with some templates to paper-piece the 12 wedges forming the dresden plate. Here is what I have done so far. It looks like my plan will be working. Yeah!