Dresden

I love the dresden quilt block so much!

I always thought it would be so difficult to make one, but they really aren't that hard.

I made this dresden mini, or tabletopper, for Teresa Coates, whose birthday is in May.
I'm just a little late.....

Teresa is a fellow member of our Handmade Birthday Club.

She loves neutrals, particularly grays, with a touch of butter yellow.

I chose my fabric and was able to make each petal a different print.

I appliqued the butter yellow center and safety pinned the block, in preparation for machine quilting. 

I am really excited about the background fabric, I think it sets off the grays really well :)

Ta da!  I finished the machine quilting!

I stitched in the ditch on the dresden, added a swirl in the center, and pebble quilted the background.

I always like to show off how pretty the back looks, quilted.

This is the binding all stitched onto the block, ready to hand stitch on the back.

Here's a closeup :)

Here's another closeup with a few untrimmed threads!

Yeah, it's finished!

I really want to keep it for myself, but I'll try resist the urge :)

The back could be used as a table topper too if you want a change.

I have a Pinterest board dedicated to dresdens, if you want to check it out here.

I have some tutorials on how to make a dresden block on my Pinterest board, random tutorials, but you will have to sift through a lot of other tutorials to find them :)

Dresden block

I wanted to make a pretty dresden table topper, a quilted, happy piece to brighten up a room.

I chose bright, sunshiny, scrappy pieces of fabric.

I sewed the dresden onto a white block.  I attached it with a small zig zag stitch, using invisible thread.

I have a lot of 1 l/2" squares, so I used them for a colorful border.

With my new sewing machine (Bernina 750 QE) that I got for Christmas, I quilted my dresden block and sewed on a scrappy border.

I can't tell you how much easier it is to machine quilt with!

I think the back of the block looks almost as pretty as the front :)

I used the free block template with video instructions from Riley Blake's mystery block of the month.  

The dresden was the month of August.

This link will take you to the video (August), along with a link to the pdf file for the pattern. 

The dresden looks so difficult, but really it isn't.