A New Dresden Plate

Growing up there was always pair of vintage traditional Dresden Plate Quilts on the twin beds in the guest room. They resembled the quilt pictured below - small pastel prints on a white ground - and were supposedly made by a great grandmother or great great aunt on my father's side who was gone long before I was born. I was never particularly interested in them at the time and when a close friend from England came to stay in the 1980s and admired the quilts my mother (who in her later years was interested in giving everything away so I wouldn't be "burdened" with all of it )happily gave them to her.


It was only after my mother was gone that I became a quilter. Although I am most interested in expressing myself through art quilts, I still have a fondness for the old and traditional. It's a little late to think about these quilts from my childhood and wonder where our family's quilts are now, but I often think about them.

So when Westside Quilters offered a workshop with Anelie Belden author of
Thoroughly Modern Dresdens, I thought that perhaps it was meant for me to make my own version in a slightly different vein.



I took myself off to a local quilt shop - Sew Modern- in West Los Angeles and bought a variety of all the brightest most "modern" prints I could find. I didn't want to do a large quilt, but I thought I could get this out of my system with a small wall hanging or table runner and after some experimenting with EQ chose a setting that was a little quirky and non-traditional.


Anelie's technique of making the blades with a finished top edge and then incorporating a "sew and flip" move on to the background foundation worked terrifically. Non-traditional as this small piece is, it works terrifically in our very old school dining room and will stay there for the summer....


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