Generations Quilt Project: Block Roundup

Hello Friends and Welcome!

For the past couple of years, I've been piecing my way through a variety of Dresden Plate and Six Pointed Star blocks for a very special family collaboration, the Generations Quilt project.

I first introduced this project on the blog back in October 2021, and was drafting templates before the month ended. As time passed, I experimented with a variety of colour and print combinations, stitches, and methods of constructing my 20 Dresden Plate and 20 Six Pointed Star blocks.

After some time working on these, I increased my goal to a total of 60 blocks, 30 each of the two patterns, so there would be extra blocks in the event that either Mom or Grandma was unable to meet the original goal.

And this past weekend, I finally finished appliqueing the last of those 60 blocks!

Block Roundup

It's been two and a half years since I started working on this project, so to celebrate my 60 block milestone, I'd like to take a look back at all the blocks I've made!

When I first started piecing my Generations blocks, I had recently finished a patchwork plague mask made with a variety of metallic prints which I was excited to continue working with!

I pieced four Dresden Plate and five Six Pointed Star blocks using these prints, and selected black, copper, and yellow as coordinating backgrounds. I also experimented with a printed background, but felt it was a little too busy with the variety of fabrics I was using.

As another attempt at a block with a printed background, I tried using semi solid prints in coordinating colours for my next Six Pointed Star block. I also approached piecing in a more organized, less scrappy layout.

I still think this block came out feeling very busy, so from this point on, I chose to use solid backgrounds instead, like the high contrast black used for my strawberry block.

Similarly to the previous block, the strawberry star used a more organized selection of prints. Specifically, it was inspired by the traditional layout of two alternating, coordinated prints that my Great Grandmother used in her blocks.

I really liked using large, busy prints at this time, and since they weren't working as backgrounds, I decided to feature them in the applique instead!

In the Six Pointed Stars, the large pieces offered a lot of area to show off the prints, while the pieces in the Dresden Plate blocks were much smaller and offered a lot of opportunity to place different parts of the print side by side. It was a lot of fun to choose which pieces should go together!

After working with so many of the same prints, I wanted to get back to a scrappier approach to piecing, but I've never been particularly drawn to the pure scrap approach.

Instead, I selected a colour scheme, then cut a variety of pieces in those colours to use for my next few Dresden Plates!

The three colour schemes I worked with were blue, green, and white; teal, gold, and brown; and rainbow, with each pursuing a different degree of scrappy.

By this time, I'd used a lot of different combinations of colours and prints, and had a pretty good idea of what blocks looked like my style, as well as which effects most appealed to me. However, after a meeting with my Mom and Grandma where we showed off all the blocks we'd made, there was some concern raised as to how well my blocks fit in with theirs.

Everyone else had chosen to use solid white or white tone on tone prints for their block backgrounds, with bright colours and busy prints featured in the applique shapes. This is a very traditional arrangement of colour, but I'm not typically drawn to using white as a background fabric.

Thinking about this, I was inspired to invert the traditional colour placement and use a variety of white prints to piece my applique shapes, then mount those on bright, bold background fabric!

I really loved the way this twist on traditional colour selection turned out and ended up making six of each block in this colour scheme! I'm also really interested to try applying this to future projects, so we might see these colours make another appearance in the future!

With these bold, high contrast blocks made, I was interested to try something totally different. A set of low contrast, beige prints on beige background blocks!

Although I wouldn't say the finished look of these blocks is specifically my style, experimentation definitely is, and this is a combination of colours I've never used before. I was also really inspired by the way my Grandma arranged colours in her Dresden Plate blocks, so that one colour seemed to flow into the next, and wanted to try that technique here!

With so much white and neutral featured in the last few sets of blocks, I wanted to finish off with something a little more colourful. So for my last few Six Pointed Star blocks, I decided to use a different print for each of the six points!

For each set of blocks, I selected a four colour palette, used one colour for the background and spaced the remaining three evenly around the star, then filled the remaining points of the star by finding a colour that fell roughly half way between the points to either side.

I really enjoyed the process of selecting colours for these blocks and am interested to see how that technique could be applied to some of my future projects!

And after all of that planning, piecing, and experimentation, I've completed 30 Dresden Plate blocks and 31 Six Pointed Stars!

There are some blocks that I like more than others, specifically, some of the earlier attempts at using printed backgrounds didn't quite turn out how I wanted, but I'm really happy with the variety overall! And since I made more blocks than orignally planned, any that I'm not totally happy with won't have to be used for this project!

Friends, it has been so much fun to look back at the progress I've made on this intergenerational quilt project!

I'm not totally sure how my totals compare to Mom's and Grandma's. I think Mom has around 15 of each pattern, and Grandma has between 10 and 12 of each. It's been more than a few months since the three of us caught up, so we should probably plan to check in with each other soon!

And if, after that meeting, it turns out that some of my blocks aren't quite playing right with everyone else's, I'm happy to make some more after doing a little bit of trouble shooting!

In the meantime, I have lots of other projects to keep me occupied and I look forward to continuing to share those with you here on the blog, as well as on Instagram!

Until Next Time Friends, Happy Quilting!

~VA