Double Dresden!
- Krista Moser
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
I tried something new this week! Have you ever made a double Dresden block? I don’t know if that’s actually what it's called, but it's essentially a Dresden Plate with peaks on both the inside and outside of the ring.
I can see making a bunch of these blocks with scraps to turn into a whole quilt. The best part is, it used up some of my smaller scrap stash… and there’s plenty more where those came from!
I cut (20) different 3” x 3½” rectangles out of small scraps from the Emily Belle Liberty collection. I had ¼ yd of ticking stripe for my background and my Dresden Plate ruler. This is an 18-degree wedge ruler, so you’ll need 20 “wedges” to get around a circle. If you have a different wedge ruler, you might need more or less, depending on the degree you are working with.
I laid out the rectangles 3½” high by 3” wide and placed the Dresden ruler over the top, aligning the 6” line across the top and the 2½” line along the bottom. Cut on both sides of the ruler to get a slight wedge shape.
Press each of these wedges in half the long way with the right sides together. This pressed in crease will help a little later with lining things up.
Stitch along both the top and bottom edges of the wedge. I made sure to lower my stitch length to 1.8 and added a little backstitch at both the start and stop, just to ensure these seams didn’t come apart.
Now, snip the folded corners on both ends just shy of the stitch line to remove bulk when turning the points.
Turn each wedge right-side out and use a sharp point turner to really get those tips poked all the way out.
Now, press the points flat. When doing this, align the seam with the crease that was pressed down the middle earlier. This will ensure a uniform shape to each of your pieces.
Here they are all laid out! There is a subtle difference between the sizing of the two points. Make sure you put the larger point to the outside and the smaller point facing the middle. This will allow the angle of the raw edges to create a circle.
Join the wedges together along one raw edge in pairs with a ¼” seam. Backstitch at both the start and stop. Sew the sets of two into sets of four, the same way, until you have the whole circle done.
Press each seam open between the wedges. I used steam and a little starch to make them really flat.
Now for the background. I cut four 9” squares from my ¼ yd of stripe. I laid them out in an alternating pattern to create a four-patch and sewed them together.
Center the Dresden circle on the background and pin it in place. I pinned every single wedge because I didn’t want it moving even a little bit!
Now, topstitch both the outer and inner edges very, very close to the edges. I try to stitch one or two needle widths inside the edge.
Once the top stitching was done, I added batting and a backing and quilted over the whole thing with my typical straight line quilting. This will be for a throw pillow, so I made up a backing panel and added a zipper (more on my zipper process here).
And here it is! A fancy new couch pillow and a great trial run of another scrap quilt idea .🙂
Happy Sunday, everyone,
Krista