A Dresden Plate Quilt that is Starting to look like a Quilt

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This quilt has seen extremely slow progress. I’ve let it sit for over a year now. I’ve never sewn a quilt with Dresden plates. I’ve never appliqued anything onto a quilt. I’ve never sewn with curves. I’ve never hand quilted a large quilt either.

I think there were so many new skills to learn with this quilt that I kept stalling.

Since this is the year to attempt to finish my works in progress, I picked it back up again, and I’m FINALLY making progress.

How am I putting together my Dresden plate quilt?

Well, the simple answer is that my quilt is going together in a variety of ways. Is there a right way and a wrong way to sew a Dresden quilt?

This quilt has become such a place of learning, and you’ll see a reflection of that in some very wonky stitches.

1. I started with cutting and piecing my Dresdens. I made twelve of them. I wrote a tutorial on that long long ago when I started this quilt. You can find that tutorial here. I have not strayed from my original process of piecing these Dresdens.

I used these templates for my Dresdens. I wanted a larger Dresden, and these templates were cut to create a sixteen inch Dresden.

If you want a bit of inspiration for some tiny Dresden tips and tricks, be sure to check out Deidre’s blog. More specifically, see this post she wrote. She hosted a sew along a while ago on Instagram and left lots of inspiration in her feed.

2. Next I had to applique my Dresdens onto my background fabric.

This is where I stalled for a long time. How big should my background squares be? What color should they be? How do I get my Dresdens attached to my background squares?

Instead of making decisions, I just stopped for a while. I finally went to my local quilt shop months ago and looked through every single solid fabric swatch card to find the one I liked most.

I settled on Bella’s Ruby Ice. It’s a very pale aqua. They didn’t have any in stock at the time but gladly ordered an entire bolt for the store so I could get what I needed.

I ended up cutting my background squares 18 inches square, and I experimented with a couple techniques to applique my Dresdens onto my background squares.

3. I first tried a basic whip stitch to secure my Dresdens to the background fabric. You can see that below. I didn’t really like how obvious the thread was. I have learned, though, that a trip through the washer and dryer covers a multitude of inaccuracies in a quilt, and I hoped those threads would disappear in the crinkles.

Instead of going forward with a whip stitched, I changed over to a blind (or invisible) stitch. You can see that below. It’s a much cleaner look. I sewed it on essentially the same way I sew a binding onto my quilt by hand.

My plan is to eventually hand quilt a quarter inch on the interior of each Dresden. With that in mind, I think it will reinforce the blind stitch well in any case where my needle grabbed only the interfacing and not the fabric too.

4. I cut circles in the same Ruby Ice background fabric. I also used the same method of sewing the circle to the interfacing (right sides together), cutting a small hole in the interfacing, and flipping them right side out.

You can see one circle up side down and one right side up in the below picture.

5. I then stitched on the circles using a blind stitch just like the Dresdens.

It was so nice when I finished the circle on the first Dresden. It gave me a better glimpse of the potential of this quilt. I hope I love this when I’m done!

6. I sewed three of the panels together just to see how this was shaping up. My plan is to only sew twelve panels. I will sew three across and four down. This quilt will be about 50 inches wide and 68 inches long.

This won’t be a super large quilt, and I tend to almost always sew large quilts. I like being able to wrap up and cover up at the same time using only one quilt. Once all the panels are sewn together, I could foresee wanting to widen the quilt a bit. We’ll see.

I have almost six Dresdens sewn onto their squares now. I assume this process will slow even more as I churn through the process of learning to hand quilt. PLEASE please please leave links below for any of your greatest tutorials for hand quilting.