I’ve finally (almost) finished my entry in the Island Batik Dresden Plate blog hop and I’m excited to share the details of Butterflies Blossoms in the Midnight Garden with you. Yes, I decided to change the project name as I made a few changes to the design - it’s a tendency that I have that I really need to curb! 😉

For this project, I used the Midnight Garden fabric collection by Jerry Khiev for Island Batik. The beautiful fabrics and rich colours inspired me to create a design that used some traditional Dresden Plate blocks as well as some additional not-so-traditional ones.

The challenge for Ambassadors is always to use as many fabrics in each collection as possible and I was able to use most of these fabrics in Blossoms in the Midnight Garden.

I started by pressing all my fabrics with my Oliso iron so that they were all set to cut.

My design had 4 traditional Dresden Plate blocks and 2 non-traditional Dresden Plate blocks – more details on these later in this post. I sorted my fabrics so that all of the ones in each Dresden Plate block were together - I find this makes it easier for cutting and to avoid any errors (at least in putting the selected fabrics together into each specific block!).

While I could have used a different fabric in each blade in each block, I instead chose 3 fabrics to use in each Dresden Plate block. As each Dresden Plate block had 12 blades, this meant that I would be cutting 4 blades from each fabric for each block. I double-checked to ensure that I had all of the correct fabrics together before I started to cut out the fan blades - and I checked my quilt math too.

When cutting out Dresden Plate blades, I like to use my Martelli 12” Flower template. This is a 30 degree template which means that I would need to cut 12 blades to create each complete Dresden Plate block (circle). How do I know this? Because I can do quilt math - sometimes! 😉

Okay, for you math nerds: A circle (a full Dresden Plate block) is 360 degrees so you just divide this figure by the degree of the template you are using (most are 18 or 30 degrees) to calculate the number of blades you’ll need to make a complete Dresden Plate block. In my example, 360 divided by 30 is 12 so I knew that I would need 12 blades to make a complete circle. Easy, right?! 🧐

Okay, so I knew that I would need to have 12 blades for each Dresden Plate block and I needed 4 traditional Dresden Plate blocks (more on these later) but I also added 2 non-traditional blocks - this is where I deviated from the original design. I wanted to add 2 blocks that had 6 fan blades and 6 flat blades. This required a little more quilt math, or, to be precise, some trial and error. I decided on the length to cut the fan blades and made these and then I used these blades to determine the length to cut the flat blades.

These flat blades are actually the same as how you cut the fan blades, you just stitch the flat blades down as they were cut to use them in your design rather than creating a fan blade.

I created 4 different size traditional Dresden Plate blocks by cutting and creating fan blades of different lengths and then stitching the appropriate blades together into pairs.

Fan blades ready to be stitched into Dresden Plate blocks

I used Aurifil thread and a Schmetz needle for stitching up each blade.

To get more details on creating traditional Dresden Plate blocks, click here.

The 2 non-traditional Dresden Plate blocks were created with a combination of flat and fan blades and I made both of these the same size – about 9”.

Of course I needed a background for all of these Dresden Plate blocks and I chose to use Island Batik Almond (one of their blender fabrics) rather than just a solid fabric. This gives a bit of texture without distracting from the main focus - the beautiful fabrics in the Midnight Garden collection!

I pieced the background together and then it was time to arrange the appliqués on it. Yes, when making a Dresden Plate block, you appliqué the Dresden Plate circle to the background fabric and then add the center circle. I like to use a glue stick to affix the blocks to the background to keep them in place.

My favourite stitch to use when appliquing is a narrow and short zigzag stitch. I chose a dark purple thread for all of the blocks and adjusted the width of the zigzag stitch to be proportional to the size of the block.

Traditional Dresden Plate block appliquéd in place

Once all of the Dresden Plate blocks were stitched down, the next step was to add the center circles. Here’s where I learned something new! When looking at the different sizes of Dresden Plate blocks, it looks like the center circles are also different sizes but this isn’t accurate 😳. All of the center circles are the same size – 3½” when using the template I used.

I cut out 6 fabric squares 4½”, fused a square of 4½” fusible web behind each of them and then added 2 layers of tear away stabilizer behind the background fabric where the circles would be.

Fabric square for center circle with fusible on it along with 2 layers of tear away stabilizer

I then used my Janome Circular Sewing Attachment to stitch a 3½” circle with a straight stitch in the center of each Dresden Plate block.

Center circle stitched in middle of Dresden Plate block and trimming started

I then trimmed the excess away from the stitched circle and then continued on to stitch a satin stitch around the raw edges of all the circles. This gave a nice finish to the center circles.

Center circle finished with a satin stitch

Next I added two borders, using two of the fabrics from the Midnight Garden collection for the first border and Blueberry (one of Island Batik blenders) for the second border.

Here’s what the top looks like.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet had time to quilt it 🥺 but that will be coming and I have lots of ideas for this quilt (cross hatch for the center circles?). 😀

Be sure to check out my Pinterest board to see all the other wonderful quilts created by my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors during this month’s Dresden Plate bloghop.

Also, be sure to check out the other Island Batik Ambassadors’ blogs to see what else they’re creating. You can find them at:

Brenda Alburl ~ Songbird Designs

Renee Atkinson ~ Pink Tulip Quilting

Megan Best ~ BestQuilter

Pamela Boatright ~ PamelaQuilts

Susan Deshensky ~ Lady Blue Quilts Studio

Brittany Fisher ~ Bobbin with Brittany

Preeti Harris ~ Sew Preeti Quilts

Mania Hatziioannidi ~ Mania for quilts

Jane Hauprich ~ Stitch by Stitch Custom Quilting

Victoria Johnson ~ Forever Quilting for You

Connie Kauffman ~ Kauffman Designs