Vintage Quilt Tutorial: Dresden Plate Part 1

Welcome to Part 1 of the Vintage Plate Quilt Tutorial!

Today I am going to show you how to make the blades and center circle. Next time I will show you how to attach it to your block

You can check out my vintage inspiration here

What you will need:

Template Printout
Scraps, fat eigths, fat quarters for blades (you need a piece at least 3"X5")
cardboard or template plastic
Frixon pen (or pencil)
thread and needle

You can see I just traced the paper but if I made more I would trace it on to cardboard or template plastic. I use a Frixon pen to trace because the lines come out with the heat of my iron. I don't worry about making mistakes and leaving behind ink marks.

You need 19 blades per plate (blades are the individual pieces I am tracing above. A plate is the blades all joined together)
You can use as many or as few different fabrics as you like.

With right sides together sew all 19 blades together at the sides (1/4" seam allowance).

I made a mini design board and laid out the blades in a pattern I liked, carried the board over to my sewing machine, and sewed the blades together. Lori Holt has a great tutorial for these design boards

You can press the seams open (like above) or to the side. For my finished block I waited until all 19 blades were sewn together and then I ironed the whole piece, seams to one side.

Tada!

Now on to the middle circle.

Use the large circle template to trace and cut your fabric. I fussy cut this awesome bird from Heather Bailey's Up Parasol

I dont have a picture of this step but you can see it sort of in the next step.
Hand sew a basting stitch around the edge of the circle. Make sure your thread has a know at one end. It doesn't have to be pretty. When you get to where you started go a few stitches past. Leave a thread tail

Place your smaller circle template in the middle of the wrong side of the cut out larger circle (for this part you will need to trace the paper template on to cardboard or template plastic)

Pull the thread tail holding the cardboard in place. The fabric edges will gather up over the circle.
Iron the front and back of the circle. Remove the cardboard.

There you have it. Now go and sew up a bunch of blades!

All fabric is from Heather Bailey's line, Up Parasol. You could easily use a fat eigth bundle for this project.

Fabric Members here is your link  . You can also find yardage of the fussy cut bird fabric there too.

Download the templates HERE
Part 2 here

See you next time!