Dresden Summer Stitch Along

We’re thrilled to welcome the ever-inspiring Susan Ache back to Auribuzz for a very special guest post! If you’ve followed Susan’s creative journey, you already know she has a gift for blending timeless technique with fresh, vibrant style. Today marks the unofficial kickoff of something truly exciting—the Dresden Summer Stitch Along—a new summer series designed in collaboration with Susan and our friends at Moda Fabrics.

The project features 12 stunning Dresden Plate blocks, each finished with an embroidered circle center. It’s a beautiful merging of two of Susan’s favorite techniques—quilting and embroidery—and a shining example of what happens when creativity meets community. We’re so delighted to help bring this vision to life featuring the perfect threads for every stitch.

Stay tuned for the full schedule, patterns, and all the details in our full launch post this Friday. For now, enjoy this special sneak peek straight from Susan herself!

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I don’t know about you, but Summer hit early and fast this year where I live! Hi my stitching buddies, it’s Susan Ache (yardgrl60 on Instagram) back for a summer fun talk.  

It seems like our Summer hot weather in the Sunshine State (FL) returned all the way back over Easter weekend. Summer has always been my time to think about a fun portable stitching project that doesn’t require a ton of brainpower. What do you think about spending your summer with me, Aurifil, and Moda stitching a fun new project?

In the early days of my stitching, I had a houseful of children resulting in tons of places to be, wait, watch, and really just be on kid guard duty. When my children were young, I would pack up my own personal car stitching bag. It consisted of my traced project, floss, scissors, and plenty of needles. This was something I kept in the car at all times because, you know, as a mom you spend the majority of your time waiting for children! Something about a simple embroidery project has always had my heart and what better time to simplify than one of the busiest times for a mom. Even if you aren’t filling your time with kiddo adventures and taxiing, this is still the perfect time to sit and catch up on all of your favorite shows in the cool air conditioning.

I have done quite a few of these fun embroidery projects. If you’ve stitched along with me before, you know there is never pressure to race for a finish— I am all about the enjoyment of it. I am sure Aurifil will help you with the links to all of the past projects if you want to fill your stitching basket with embroidery waiting for you to play.

So, let’s get right to it. This project is my Summer dream, kicking off on the first day of Summer, finishing up on the last day.  How fun is that? Every two weeks we will release 2 embroidery patterns to you. You can either collect them all or just jump right in and stitch, but I can promise you that each pattern is a quick stitch.  We are going to be embroidering the centers for a Dresden quilt block.  Now, I do know from comments in the past that most of you are quilters, but if you aren’t, there are super cute alternate projects that can be made with these fun embroidered circles.

We have decided to give you the pattern for the finished quilt on launch day (Friday). The was important to me because I love making a Dresden plate quilt and, if you know me, you know I love to use my scraps first. I all of my scraps for this one. I absolutely love playing with them in the Summer and on the off chance that you’re like me, I wanted to be sure you had the opportunity to plan and save and sort those fabric scraps for use in this quilt. So, this is really a two-fer, a projects focused on your fabulous scraps and stitching.

You will see that the pattern supplies are written for yardage, but don’t worry about that! Since you know the size for your Dresden fans you can grab from scraps, measure, and you are good to go. I decided to concentrate on my red, white, and blues, mainly because my original intent for this project was to use tons of color in the center stitching. I may or may not have been distracted by a show (it really was a good one!) and forgot to change colors… that’s why my stitching became a redwork project.  I’m not unhappy about that either. This is a fun one to experiment whether you’re in the mindset to use a ton of color, or want to keep things simple with one focus hue. Use your creativity!

I will leave you with this for now… grab your needles and get ready to stitch the long dog days of summer away. Full project including the quilt pattern, schedule, and your first two embroidery patterns drop on Friday! See you then!

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editor’s note: Summer Memories, The Floss is a great place to start if you’re looking for the perfect floss for this project. Find it HERE or browse all of Susan’s fabulous thread sets via Shop Aurifil HERE.

We can’t wait for this one!! Let us know if you’ll be stitching along with us in the comments, whether it’s for the full quilt or simply the fun of the embroidery! HUGE thanks to Susan and to our friends at Moda!