Dresden Plate Quilt Finish & Another Give Away!

This poor quilt was nearly finished and just sitting in a plastic tub waiting for me to get a little time to give it some attention.  I won all the petals from these dresden plate blocks already pre - cut and partially ready to go in an ebay auction probably 3 - 4 years ago.  I slowly started making the blocks that finish at 14 1/2" square.  Life got in the way, many quilt shows and new pattern designs, surgeries, other interests came and went.  Finally last week I pulled this project out again determined to get it finished!

I was shocked - all 20 blocks were finished and I had forgotten that I was this far along on this quilt!  Nearly all the sashing strips were sewn and cut to size.  And nearly all the nine patches were sewn and ready to go.  I did a little happy dance and started arranging the pieces on my design wall.  These are the kind of surprises I like!

Then gorgeous weather set in here and my flower and vegetable garden started screaming my name and this quilt got set aside for a few more days.

Then once again, I was in the mood and determined to finish this quilt once and for all today.  And here she is - I hope you enjoy the pictures!  Oh - but wait - I'm not finished yet!!!  I've got a little surprise for some lucky person at the bottom of this blog post - yes - it's another give away!!  Be sure to read and scroll all the way down!

The finished quilt.

A close up of the red polka dot flower centers.

A close up of the tiny pin dot red and white fabric in the sashing and also the white on white fabric!

Another fun shot of the quilt!

The backing fabric - found in my stash!!!!  Helped me clear out 7 yards!

Now - are you ready for a little fun?  I've had a lot of great comments on my facebook page about this quilt - so I thought I'd do another fun little giveaway!  I have 23 sets of pre-sewn dresden plate petals left over.  I do not see me making another bright dresden plate quilt like this again in the near future.  Bright quilts are fun to make, but I'm ready to play with my reproduction fabrics again for awhile.

Here's a picture of the 23 sets of petals - all individually bagged with 20 petals per bag!  I'm also going to include my freezer paper templates for the center of the dresdens!  (That's what those white circles are in the lower right hand corner of the photo!)

This is a photo of one of the baggies of petals all arranged for you to see!

Here's a quick picture to show you how the tips of each petal have been stitched already by whomever it was that I won this auction from!  All you have to do is sew the petals together! (I will say - not all the petals are exactly perfect - I did have to make a few adjustments on a couple of them - but nothing major at all!)

So - leave me a comment and tell me what you think of my quilt and I'll draw the lucky winners name on Friday and send that person all 23 packages of these pre-sewn petals to give you a little jump start in created your own Dresden Plate quilt!

If you are making the same size quilt as shown above.  My dresden squares are 14 1/2" square finished (cut your background squares to 15").  The sashing strips are cut 2" wide and the squares for the nine patches are also cut 2" square.  Now - there was a lot of waste fabric on those stashing strips when using such a large size block - I think if I even make this pattern again, I might cut the block size down a bit.  When I sewed the 3 strips together for my sashing and then cross cut those pieces to 15" long - that left me only able to cut two total sashing strips from each set of fabrics!  That left me with a bunch of red/white/red sashing strips left that measured about 11" to 12" long.  What a waste!  Anyhow - just thought I'd toss that tip out there for ya!  I wanted a lot of background on my blocks for some pretty quilting - but at the same time, ended up with a lot of waste!  The finished quilt measures 80 1/2" x 99 1/2"