Moda recently held a friendship quilt blog hop. Through it I discovered lots of wonderful new blogs to follow, among them that of Vanessa Christenson. Having a browse through the V & Co. blog I stumbled across her recent tutorials on how to make and finish a dresden plate. I’d always been daunted by this design but her tutorials made it seem so easy and I knew it was something I had to try.

I had recently purchased some remnants of FreeSpirit’s Kumari Garden by Dena Designs and they seemed like the perfect choice for this project. I quickly cut out 20 petals and was surprised at just how quickly the Dresden plate came together. I was between minds as to whether I would place my plate on a dark or lime green background. My husband chose dark green so I went with that. Even now I’m still not sure it was the right decision but I do really love the result.

I initially intended on using the background fabric to finish my dresden plate but instead at the last minute I opted for the butterfly Kumari Garden print.

This gave me the inspiration to do a little creative hand quilting around the dresden plate design. As this piece was destined for a cushion cover – yes I am rather fond of them – I felt I needed a quilting design I could use to fill the corners. A quick bit of drawing on the computer and I came up with an outline of the butterfly I had chosen from my plate center. I scaled it to a couple of different sizes, printed it, traced it on tissue paper then stitched through this to transfer the design to my quilt. I chose to use some Chariots of Fire from my recently purchased King Tut threads – the reds and yellow hues picked up nicely on those in the central butterfly.

With a simple slip cover backing and binding pieced together from a selection of Kumari Garden prints the finished cusion is now sitting proudly on my sofa, the colours and flutterbys reminding me of summer days to come.

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