Camouflaged Dresdens

I’ve been working on a Dresden Plate design for the past few months, and it’s now finished! 🙂 I’d made one several years ago from a pattern by Susan Cleveland, and she has now written a book full of inspiration: Dynamic Dresdens. Her method avoids having to appliqué a circle in the center of each plate, and the blades are actually a bit dimensional, as you may be able to tell in the photos if you click/enlarge them.

One of the quilt designs in the book “camouflages” half of the spokes of the plate by making them in the same fabric as the background, and that really caught my attention. My version is called Camouflaged Dresdens (for obvious reasons!), and I made it in white, teal, and two shades of purple. As an extra touch, I machine embroidered different floral motifs into the lavender spokes.

It was fun quilting this one. I did free-motion feathers all around each of the plates, quilting right over the white blades to make them blend into the background, and then added a couple of feathered wreaths in the background, along with straight lines (ruler work) and a couple of faux partial Dresden plates in two corners.

You may already know that I love to add corded mini piping next to the binding of my quilts, but this time I did a double row, just for fun. 🙂 There is also a single row of the piping along the edges of the dark purple wedges in the Dresdens. The finished quilt measures about 48″ x 36.5″.