Last week, while drugged up on cold and flu medication, I decided to play with my small stash of Liberty fabrics. I started slowly collecting fabric just over a year a go, when a darling friend gave me two Liberty lawn fat quarters as a thank you present.
For those of you not familiar with the fabric it is a light weight, beautiful cotton that comes in the most fabulous designs and is made by the famous British store Liberty of London….Ironically I have bought quite a bit of stuff at Liberty in my time in England but never went to the fabric section!
I had originally popped my Liberty cherry with the sample pillow for my Introduction to Paper Piecing class at Modern Domestic (my main Liberty enabler!).
This 16 inch star used some bigger slices of my stash but I loved how the delicate Liberty fabric plays against the Essex linen.
Anyway this week I had the crazy idea to make some mini dresden plate flowers with my Liberty stash. I wanted to go small because I also had a collection of 21/2 inch squares that my darling BF had bought back for me from London…and I wanted hand work because it meant I did not have to leave the couch. The end result was this…
The finished 16 point flower is 5 inches wide.
Somewhere during this process my husband declared that I had officially gone crazy and I think he might be right. I have made up a little travel kit and I am now obsessed with making these things….
I found a pattern sheet on-line at AMC-Quilts that I used (LINK HERE)… their PDF pattern was the perfect size and I just printed it on card stock and cut out the petal pieces and started to sew.
I am not sure what I am going to do with them but for now I am happy to just make away.
WOMBAT QUILTS 
Lovely Dresdens. I’m a great fan of Liberty Lawn – it is so delightful to hand quilt.
Viv I agree. I love how if feels to handle, though occasionally working this small it has been a slippery sucker!
Shoot, I feel the need for tiny Dresdens in my future! Because more projects, amirite?
It will be the perfect project for you to do during the PMQG meetings now that you do not have to lead the meetings!
I hope you’re feeling better now.
Lovely Dresdens! I loved the fabric section of Liberty. It’s the only part of the store I remember (aside from the exterior). Of course you’ll head straight for it next time you’re in London, won’t you?
Next time I am heading straight for the fabric section…after I have been to the handbags!
I know what you mean . . .making the pieces is like eating potato chips . . .can’t do just one. I’m working on a G’mother’s Flower Garden with 1″ hexies. I’m addicted too! Thanks for the pattern. I’m getting ready for a knee replacement next month and need something to do with my hands.
I love these, the Liberty Fabrics, so good for your project. I made a little wall hanging with mini Dresdens. Your fabric makes yours so special. Good idea to hand piece them too! Inspiring!
Too adorable! I cannot wait to see them come together!
Eeek! Cue spooky music. I’m only making dresden plates for the corners on my latest quilt. Not as cutely tiny, and much more like plates in that the centres are larger, but still. Yours are gorgeous, and need to be appliqued immediately to a white background to show off the colours and patterns. There really is something madly addictive about hand stitching and paper templates, whether it’s hexies or dresdens, and they are particularly gorgeous in Liberty lawn.
BTW the Liberty star may ot may mot be the start of your pillow.
Ooooh, how exciting! I was drooling quietly to myself over that; adore the colours and it’s so elegantly simple!
These are so lovely! I recently cut into my (mini-mini-) stash of Liberty fabrics for the first time, and I am already on the hunt for more. They are just lovely, especially the way that you’ve put them together on those dresdens!
Wow, you never cease to amaze me! Love, love this project. And the timing is perfect because I was looking for a small hand project. I was so excited you left a link! So to be clear…the template you used was the one in your link? It said something like…makes 27 with three left over…which sounds like 8 petals to a plate. I’m missing something because you have 16 petals. Am I to assume cutting two at a time per petal template? You are EPPing, correct? Are you leaving templates in till each plate completed?sorry so many questions!
Mary i was confused by the directions on the template too, but did not worry about it too much as i was not making things they way they do. I get one flower and a few left overs per sheet. I have been cutting the petals out on the inner line, there is a lot of excess cardboard but it was the best pattern i could find on line. I am keeping my cardboard in till i am ready to sew the dresdens down, just so they maintain their shape.
Thanks so much for posting this! I was wondering the same things as Mary- I too was confused by the directions. Your little Liberty dresdens are adorable! I can’t wait to start a little project with these. Thanks for sharing that link.
These tiny flowery plates look really great! Love it on the first sight.
I’ve got the Liberty love too ~ see you tomorrow night for more Liberty love!!!
Beautiful Work! Just wondering, do you pre-wash your fabrics? I was the thinking the liberty and the linen may react differently, but I’ve never tried it myself.
Christin these linen and Liberty projects are not destined for washing really…so I did not pre-wash or back the Liberty (both of which are recommended approaches). I would approach a Liberty quilt differently.
One word – Beautiful
I like your kind of officially gone crazy… I’ve never been a fan of dresden plate patterns and I’ve not been particularly keen to embrace yet another style of quilting but looking at your pictures, I hear the “dark side” calling. Maybe I’ll add it to a someday list.
These are really pretty!
I can’t even stand how ridiculously cute those mini dresdens are! And in Liberty fabrics no less – you’re killing me! So happy to have found your blog 🙂
First of allni hope you are better. Next I love Liberty, I have a very small stash and keeping it for “something special”. Your mini Dresdens are gorgeous. Cannot wait to see the completed article.
Love the hand work idea. I have been working on Aqua and orange Hexies for a year. This would be a nice break. Did you glue your template to your fabric? In your travel kit you have fabric and templates together in the upper right pocket perfectly matched up. Have you considered doing a tutorial? That would be helpful for newbies like me. Thanks! Glad your feeling better. I had that bug last week too. Ugh!
Ann. I do glue baste my template and fabric together using a generic glue stick. I find it easy to remove the cardboard at the end because I also punch a hole in my template. With this project I have been using really stiff cardboard, scrap booking card stock actually which seems to have helped me when working with this delicate fabric.
Oh these dresdens are rather gorgeous. Thanks also for the info about glue basting and your template. More inspiration for me!!
I love the star, is the pattern available?
Kathryn there is a link to the Dresden Plate template I used in the blog post.
Not the Dresden, the star. I love the star!! TIA
Those mini dresdens are the cutest!! Just got some Alice in Wonderland Liberty so thinking what to do with those, maybe I’ll try a dresden!
How adorable! That’s the sort of craziness I could imagine myself succumbing to.
I have a slowly growing Liberty stash too. One day I will be brave enough to cut into it.
Thank you for my weekend project! I wanted to make a Dresden pincushion and this is perfect!
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Hi! I epp hexagons but don’t know how to do this shape. Do you have any pictures of the work in progress with the odd turns?
Hi Laura. I will put a photo of the back of my mini Dresdens up in Instagram for you…they won’t let me add it to this comment unfortunately. It will appear in the side scroll if my blog. Hope that helps.
Thank you for your response! I don’t have Instagram but I poked around YouTube and I think I’ve got it figured out. Now I’m getting ready to sew some and I’m thinking I cut my pieces wrong. I cut on the solid lines. Should they be cut on the dotted lines for the five inch finish? Would it work with the bigger pieces? They look like 16 go together but the hole in the center is quite large.
Thanks for the inspiration :). https://flic.kr/p/KtU5R3
Oh I love them. What is the fabric? It is fabulous.
Thanks! Just a mix from my stash. A lot from Joanne fabrics and a few are Cotton and Steele.