MSNP has kicked in again!

In the week leading up to Easter I was browsing some blogs and a number of people were making Dresden Plates blocks.  Now I have made 1 of these before and I quite liked the ease of the block and how nice it looked.  Since we were going away for a week over Easter, I was also thinking of what to take with me craft wise.  I was hoping hubby qould be off fishing and leave me to my own devices.

Looking at these blogs was when my MSNP kicked in.

I decided that I just HAD to make a Dresden Quilt.  I worked it all out - 16 squares with a smallish border, Suffolk Puff where the blocks meet each other and the border (that makes 25 of those) - size and all.

Since I decdied to have a black background and I needed wanted to have rainbow colours in each Plate, I knew I did not have the fabrics on hand.  So mucjh for trying to use the stash.  So off to the shop I went.

I came home with this:

And some plain Red and lots of plain Black.

I made my own templates:

Then I cut out some of the fabric:

 And sewed it up into this, just to check my template:

It worked and sat flat, so I made some more:

By this stage we had to come home early - the weather had turned really cold and when you are living in a small caravan with a canvas annex it's not pleasant.  Once home I spent the next day finishing off all the plates blades and then started on appliquing them to the background.  I also had to cut out the centres:

The first one complete looked like this.  Each plate is hand stitched down:

With some friends the quilt looks like this:

I played around with a folded fabric flower - not sure if I like it though.  Maybe it will be better if it's a bit bigger.

All 256 blades have been sewn together to make 16 Dresden Plates.  I have put just one colour every fourth blade and mixed up all the other blades in each plate.

I am going to quilt it in a quilt-as-you-go method and use a variggated thread (if I can find 1 I like); I have cut the front background pieces larger than the back background pieces.  This will give me a flap or sort of binding to sew down on the back.  Being all the one colour - Black - you most likely won't notice it anyway.  Whatever I end up putting at the block corners will be added after the quilt is together.