Double-Pointed Dresden Plate

In my previous post I showed you the beginnings of a new quilt, which is now finished. I’ve had a lot of fun with this one, but I’ve also had a serious problem, caused entirely by user error. 😉 The pattern was designed by Susan Cleveland, and it went together just beautifully. The problem arose when I carelessly read a number on my Bernina 780; my presser-foot pressure was reading 14, rather than the necessary -14 I use for ruler work; that’s a negative number! These numbers are arbitrary, of course, and change from one machine and one brand to the next, but I was having all sorts of problems shoving the quilt through the machine until I realized what I’d done. LOL!

The quilting on this piece was quite simple — just straight lines in the linen background fabrics. I did two diagonally-adjacent quarter sections in vertical lines and the opposite sections in horizontal lines. I didn’t want to do anything fancier here, as it would have been lost on the busy background; besides, the Dresden plates are the real focal point of the quilt. These were appliquéd onto the background by stitching in the ditch between each pair of wedges — very simple. The points at each end of each wedge aren’t attached at all and give a bit of dimension to the quilt. I had a few of those wedges left over after making the quilt top, so I used some of them in the label.  Naturally, I used the narrow corded piping I like so much, as well as a pieced binding. The finished quilt measures approximately 26.5″ x 24″.