Hi I’m Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company and I’ve got a really fun project
for you today.
Take a look at this quilt behind me.
Isn’t this darling?
All the little pots with the Dresden Blades, just such a fun little look.
So to make this quilt, what you’re going to need is one packet of 10 inch squares and
this is your background fabric.
You’re going to need 42 of those.
Where you’re going to need one packet of 5 inch squares and this is for your pot and
we’ve used the Cotton Supreme Nile Green by RJR.
Then you’re going to need a jelly roll.
We used Fresh Air by American Jane from Moda.
Love these thirty prints.
You’re also going to need a couple of templates.
We used the Tumbler Template and the Dresden plate template and then you’re going to
need 5 yards of Heat n’ Bond because this is an applique project.
But it’s all done on the sewing machine so it’s super super easy.
So to make this block what you’re going to do, you’re going to take your pot fabric.
First we’re going to concentrate on the pots and you’re going to adhere it, iron
it to the Heat n’ Bond.
So we’re going to bring that over here.
We’re going to take our green square, line it up here and iron it on to the Heat n’
Bond and you’ll do this will all your pots.
It’s easy to do it all at one time.
Then what we’re going to do is take our Tumbler Template right here.
We’re going to lay it on our square and we’re going to cut, going to cut out our
pot.
So just cut right along the edges of the Tumbler Template.
Let me trim up this bottom right here.
And that gives us our pot shape and it just really clean and easy and quick.
So you’re going to do that with all your pots and then we need to make the Dresden
blades.
Now if you’ve never made a Dresden blade, this is going to rock your world because I
love all things Dresden, because they’re so easy.
I didn’t realize how easy they were.
So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take a jelly roll strip.
Now if you, when you use a whole strip you’re going to want to cut your selvedge ends off.
And then you can just lay your ruler on it.
Just like this.
And we are going to put this at the 5 inch mark.
So I’m going to turn this right here so this can go now.
There are marks on the Dresden Blade all the way up and down for how big you want your
Dresden.
We want them to be 5 inches.
So we’re going to put this on the 5” mark.
Right at the 5” mark it’s going to come edge to edge on that jelly roll strip.
So then what we’re going to do is we’re going to cut this up here, across here, and
down here.
And that’s going to give us our blade.
Now you will want to go ahead and do this all the way along on your on your Dresdens
you will want to go ahead and cut all them out.
And this is the blade right here that you’ll get and let me show you how to do this, because
this is so much fun.
So to make a Dresden Blade what we’re going to do is we’re going to fold it right sides
on itself just like this.
And we’re going to sew straight across the top.
So let’s go to the sewing machine and do that.
All right.
And when you do these you’ll want to chain piece them.
You’ll just do them one after another after another.
So here we have you can see that’s, that’s straight across the top and then we’re going
to turn them and I just like to lay that seam to one side, push my point out and lay it
down and you’ve got the blade done.
The pointy part is already done.
We haven’t had to do any facings, we haven’t had to measure the sides, we haven’t had
to use a template, we haven’t you know I mean we just, this is just perfect.
So then what we’re going to do is we’re going to sew them together in twos twos twos,
fours fours fours, because there are six flowers in each pot.
This is the, this is the block we’re working on and there are six little blades in each
pot.
So I have some sewn together here and I have three and I’m going to put this red one
over here and put this one right here in the center and that’s going to be my bouquet
of dresdens.
So let me go to the sewing machine and sew these together.
Now one of the things you need to remember with Dresden’s is that it’s this part
at the top that matters we don’t care what’s happening down here in the bottom.
It’s going to be covered by the pot.
So we’re just going to make sure these match up and sew a quarter on an inch down the side.
And we’re going to do that with all of our blades.
Sew them together.
Make little Dresden bouquets.
And then I’m going to add the other pieces right on to it.
So I have a total of six.
And I want to stay and measure from my top, make sure my tops are together.
And then sew right down the side.
Alright.
So now we have this little Dresden fan, little bit of a fan right there, I’m going to iron
it down.
I like to iron from the top first, because I like to make sure that all my seams are
pressed open.
And then you can go on to the back and press your seams down if you’d like.
Alright so let’s get our background scrap, I mean our background square and put our block
together.
So we have to peel the paper off of our pot and I do that, you can score the back or you
can just roll the edge.
I’m just going to roll the edge off here and peel that off and we’re going to lay
our blades on here.
You want to make sure that they’re not too close to the top.
Oh one more thing we have to do, on the edge of these blades there’s still a raw edge
and we don’t want that.
So we’re going to take this edge and we’re going to fold it under a half an inch and
press that down.
So let’s do that.
We don’t want any raw edges on this.
Sometimes you like a raw edge but on the Dresden’s I like them to be turned under.
Alright so now their pressed down.
You can see how I did that right here.
And press those down, so lay them back again on your square and lay your pot over it.
Make sure that it’s not too close to the bottom, because you don’t want to catch
it in that seam.
And these are not too close to the top and your pot should come pretty close to the edges
of your flowers.
Then you want to take this over to the iron and we’re going to press this down.
And because this pot has the heat n’ bond on it, it’s going to help hold our Dresden’s
in place.
So very carefully.
Come over here to the iron.
Now if you want to put a little bit of heat n’ bond on the back of one of your Dresden’s
just to hold it in place you can do that.
If not you can put a little pin in there.
And then what’s left is just the machine applique.
And I love this part, because it’s so quick and easy.
So I, you can use a zigzag, I like a blanket stitch and you want to find the blanket stitch
on your machine.
I’m going to go ahead and pin these, pin these down I have a little bent pin here.
And so it just holds down while I’m stitching it.
And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to use a little tiny blanket stitch that’s
just going to come along this edge, and catch the edge so it just gives it that finished
look.
You can see it right here, on here.
But you’ll want to look on your machine and see what stich you have.
This is a great place for those decorative stitches or your zigzag.
I happen to just like the, the blanket stitch.
Once you get your machine all set up with the stitch you want, what you’re going to
do is you’re going to sew all the way around the pot first.
So I’m going to go ahead and do that.
And I just make sure that it stays right along the edge of my fabric and just stitches over
and catches that.
Now I’m going across the top of my pot and we should just to finish this up real quick.
There we go, we’re at the end.
And now we need to blanket stitch down these points.
So what I’m going to do you know the first side is relatively easy cause it’s right
along the side.
So we’re going to sew right up to the edge where this curves in and slow down.
You want to make sure your needle is in a down position and you’re just going to rotate
it and you’re going to do that point.
When you get to the point, you’ll rotate it and come down the other side and you’re
just going to do this with all your points.
And you it’s amazing really how, how nice and clean it looks.
Alright here is our last point.
Coming down the side.
One, one more long side and we are home free.
Perfect.
Alright, so this is our block, right here this little potted Dresden.
And go ahead and trim off these threads.
And there we go, there’s our finished block.
Now I want you to take a look at how this looks right here on the top, you can see how
the little stitch comes in and it just makes a beautiful little finish.
You haven’t had to do any hand work.
And really quickly what we’re going to do is, there are forty two of these in the packet.
So that means we have six pots across by seven pots down.
So this finishes out 68x78” quilt.
We’ve used about, about a yard for this first border and a yard in a half for this
second border.
And it just comes together quick and easy.
Now when you go to put your rows together, we are just sewing pots to pots, blocks to
blocks, right together.
So we’re just going to sew this seam, sew a whole row, attach the other row.
There is no sashing or anything involved in this.
Now if you decided to add sashing it would add a whole other look.
But we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Dresden flower pot from the Missouri Star
Quilt Company.