Hive 7 February Tutorial- Dresden Plate

Hi everyone! I'm Ashley, Say Lucky pretty much every where- Instagram, Flickr, and my extremely neglected blog.  I am a 30 year old mother of three. I recently took a leave of absence from my high school English teaching job to stay home with my girls and start a PHD program in writing and  rhetoric.

I live in Northern Virginia about thirty minutes from Washington DC. I'm a total city snob and love DC. It has amazing history and is such a weird, unique city. My husband and I lived in DC the first 1.5 years we were married. I miss it! So if you're ever in the area call me!

My family: I married my high school sweetheart. We've been married almost seven years. We have twin 4 year old girls. Having twins is amazing. Their relationship is fascinating- they are polar opposites but best friends. Twin moms joke about all the random questions we get asked so here you go: twins don't run in my family, they were spontaneous (so we were lucky and did not do IVF to have them), there is no dominant twin or "naughty" twin. One is a Tom boy and one is my girly girl. Then I have an 8 month old baby. She is awesome! Such a good baby and I love being able to enjoy her infancy, which was hard to do with twins. She is a smart girl and already knows how to get what she wants. She has already secured her place as the "baby".

I started quilting for two reasons: some of my twin mom friends started a bee and I thought "hey why not" plus my mom is a quilter and I thought it would be something fun for us to do together. I've been quilting almost three years and this is my second bee. I've only completed 6 quilts, I have one ready to be sandwiched and one waiting for sashing. My daughter's I've been working on for oh two years and then fabric ready for at least 4 more that I hope I get to one day. I think I have quilting ADHD. It doesn't help that I took a nine month hiatus when pregnant.

So my stash, my stash is a hot mess right now. I got evicted from my sewing room when baby came. I'm in the basement right now which isn't bad, I have a TV but I share with the four year olds. So I'm limited to a few plastic containers and my sewing machine. Since my little nine month break I've been pretty good about not adding to my stash and I'm trying to cut it back but we shall see. My ultimate dream is for my husband to build me some shelves or I could just buy a whole new house and let it have its own room. One can dream right?  Color wise I have pink coming out my ears, I mean with three girls really what did you expect. I also have a lot of blue, and some purple.

My favorite designers are in order- Bonnie and Camille (I love them, they are adorable), Joel Dewberry (I did a quilt for my bedroom in Aviary II), Aneela Hoey, and Lotta Jansdotter. There a few others I like buy those are my favorites.

One thing I wished I known from the beginning is that it doesn't have to be perfect. Especially with actually quilting. No one will notice when it's all said and done. People will look at it as a whole and not at the tiny little imperfections.

My favorite tool is my seam ripper of course. It certainly gets used more than anything else. Ripping out stitches, cutting off pieces from the sewing machine, turning right side out, pressing seams. It's terribly useful, buy a nice one.

Being a book worm and English nerd I had some trouble with this fictional character piece until I was duh. Mine is Tris from Divergent. If you have not read these books do so immediately. I love her!

Ok now my Block!  We are going to make a Dresden Plate following this method by Elizabeth Hartman.
First step- the colors! I want you to use are red and/or aqua. Feel free to use both or just one. The nice thing about this pattern is you can use a charm pack!

You need strips of 5x2.5.  If you have the rulers great, if not she provides them (measure to make sure they are printed at the right size.

One little tip, to get your points nice when you turn them it helps to trim a little off the corner by the seam.

I've found slow and steady is the best for appliqué. 

I would like the blocks sewn onto a grey solid background. I used Kona Ash, but any grey would do. To appliqué the plate on I used grey thread but I'm fine with you using white. 

For appliquéing the center circle instead of interfacing I actually just a piece of white fabric and followed her method exactly(if you have it feel free to use interfacing or whatever method works best for you). 

I made my center circle a little smaller, mostly to center the bird as best I could.