Where Are My Dragons?

Well I finally finished my dragons quilt, now officially titled "Where Are My Dragons?" in honor of Daenerys Targeryan and "Game of Thrones" the TV show (I'm not into the books.)

I got the pattern from Maaike Bakker's wonderful book Spellbinding Quilts, which contains lots of paper-pieced patterns for dragons, witches, wizards, fairies and other supernatural and mythological figures.

This quilt is about 50x50 inches, machine-pieced and hand-quilted. The quilting was very difficult for me because the nontraditional blocks don't lend themselves to simple patterns. I didn't want to do straight-line machine quilting because that seemed bland and I thought it would disrupt the pictures. I didn't want to bother paying someone to machine quilt it either and so it sat around for a long time until I decided to just go for it and do free-hand patterns and stitch-in-the-ditch on the interior, and a Celtic border pattern on the borders.

It was also difficult because I used black quilting thread everywhere except on the dragons and wizard so I needed to quilt in excellent light!

I'm a big fan of Bakker's patterns and would definitely class them as intermediate paper piecing. These shouldn't be your first time at the rodeo but if you've done some basic patterns you should be fine. The blocks are between 5 inches and 15 inches on different sides (they are designed to fit together) and the most complex blocks have five or six units to connect. The dragons were easier for me than the wizard.

Overall I'm really pleased with it and can't wait to display it and show it off at my next guild meeting in September.