Surprise! Dresdens Are Easy.
Dresden Plate blocks have always looked super time consuming, so I was delighted to find these going together quickly. After my rough start, that is. My first tries were too big, the fans reached way up past the top trim and did not meet the right side edge. Quite a lot of investigation followed, beginning with careful checking of my seam allowances and ending with some Illustrator geometry. When I re-drew the fan template 1/8″ shorter at the top, everything finally fit and construction of the next ones went very fast. Try the original template first and if you have the same problem, my new template is in the media files and I think you can pick it up there.
Interesting things were learned while making these blocks. I saw why we started with 7″ block as after all the appliquéing, my block was a little bit smaller. Good thing I started in the middle and could trim off all 4 sides. Then there was a challenge to find the right color top stitch thread. Yellow looked wrong on the orange and vice versa; a tan thread turned out to be the solution.
So, problems conquered, things learned, a good day I’d say. Here are my 3 entries for the drawing:
