Dresden Quilt Blocks: Tips and Tricks

hi I'm candy Grisham I am the author of Dresden quilt blocks reimagined with C and T publishing today I'm going to show you how to make a couple of the basic blocks but along the way I'm going to show you lots of my tips and tricks that I've learned that you can adapt with the Dresden's or any of your sewing two of the basic Dresden blocks are the ones that have the straight edges and the pointed edges that you can see some behind me to do the straight edges you start with two strips of fabric your desired size you put them right sides together and then you're going to cut with the 18 degree Dresden wedge when you cut these you want to keep them all in a nice stack with the same fabric on the top this makes your sewing a lot easier as you sew them the smart thing to do is to chain piece them meaning that you just keep feeding these through the sewing machine without breaking your thread in between each block that gives you this nice unit with everything attached one of my special tips and things I love to use is some kind of a seam ripper stand this is a homemade one with just a little two inch block of wood and a standard seam ripper but if you have this right next to you after you chain piece you can just come right along and clip apart all of your pieces and you save your hands you save thread it's also a lot more efficient as you go the seam ripper is always available then to you as well so after you've sewn your ten pairs you need 20 wedges for each block you're gonna press those seams open I like to use some kind of a pressing ham this again is another homemade one it's made from a banister rail cut into sections it's pine it's unfinished and I simply lay the seam line right on top and press and that gives me a nice crisp open seam with no seam allowances showing along the way so I finished sewing all of my pairs and now I have a circle with straight edges all of my seams are pressed open and you might say what's that in the middle that's a little piece of fusible interfacing that I use to stabilize these centers the fusible part or that bumpy part goes towards the front of your block that way when you go to put your centers on it will stick a little bit to your Center and help you to sew that down now the center's I make using just a couple layers of freezer paper with the fabric pushed in or pulled in or rounded with a basting stitch and then that comes out and another tip along the way is to take a piece of freezer paper folded in half fold it in half again cut out with the size of the center you're using in the middle and I've marked the lines on here to show you where the seam lines match up on my block if I do them at north south east and west right where they meet in the middle I can put that Center and it's perfectly centered every single time saves you a lot of trouble and ripping them after your Center is on you need to finish the block in order to finish these blocks I use a fusible interfacing the same way so it's only fusible on one side I rough cut out a circular shape pin it to my block with the fusible to the right side of my blog pin it well and Stitch a quarter inch seam all the way around the outside trim that interfacing away turn it and there's my finished block it's all ready to go on to the quilt it's got a little bit of the fusible interfacing on the back which is called created a facing and it's sticky enough that when you take this and iron it to your surface it'll stay in place long enough for you to sew that down so that's finishing the round edge or the straight edge plates the other plates that I like to do are the pointed plates these are very popular again it's 20 wedges each time it's 20 wedges but these are going to finish the edge of each wedge before you sew them all together when you do this you've cut your wedges and you're going to take each wedge and you're going to sew a quarter inch seam right across the top with it folded in half lengthwise you can chain piece these just like we did the other one I've cut a little bit of extra out of the top of that wedge if that seam just to reduce the bulk and I'm going to finger press that seam open and turn this using my friendly little poker to turn that seam out when you turn these you need to make sure that the fold lines are centered otherwise your points will be off on your whole Bluff this is just a simple piece of card stock with a 45-degree line drawn from the corner if you insert that into your point line up the seam line on that line and press every one of your folds will be perfectly symmetrical after you've finished pressing all of your points you're gonna sew them together again as pairs when you start to sew I line up the folds I start about a quarter of an inch down from the fold and backstitch and then do the seam all the way down that glocks this top together and you won't get any little threads hanging out of there again these are pressed open all the way around you need 20 wedges to finish when your black is finished you've got all your seams pressed open you're stabilized with a little bit of stabilize our interfacing and fusible interfacing and you can add your Center with this centering place and you're finished your black is done and ready to applique to your quilt so these are two of the basic edges there's several more in the book the book also goes into some more complicated type of blocks that are pieced and have a lot more going on in them but they all can have these same kind of edges no matter what you do so I hope you have a lot of fun and make lots of plates thank you you

Channel: CandTPublishing

Views: 20,875

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Id: xNfz4SmBQLQ

Length: 7min 18sec (438 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020