I love dresden plates and still dream of the day that I will be able to make a full size quilt top with dresden. I have discovered a few tips that may be helpful.

You can get 3- 3.75" dresden plate blades from one charm square. First mark your EZ quilting ruler with a piece of tape at 3.75". Fold and press your charm square in half and line up your ruler on the 3.75 mark and line up the edge of the ruler right up against the raw edges (as far from the folded edge but not over the raw edges)

Carefully cut around the ruler to give you 2 Dresden blades.

Open up the remaining charm square you should be left with a wedge just wide enough to get your third blade.

After you have sew the blades together and are turning your corners, this tip may help out as well.

I like to use a piece of thin cardboard or cardstock paper and draw a line diagonally across it. After clipping the corner a tiny bit, I finger press the seam allowance open and turn the corner out. To make sure my seam allowance is center, I line up the sewn line with the line draw on the square and line up the opposite corner of the square with the middle of the blade and iron in place with the cardstock still in place to set. The square also insures I have a perfect 90 degree point on my blade. You can certainly use something sharp and pointy to get the point on the Dresden but I've found that I end up making my points too pointy.

I finished my dresden into a pillow for my daughter.

Good luck and I can't wait to see your dresden plates!

- Jessica

Holding up quilts for pictures

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Have you ever struggled to hold up your quilts? Or rather, does your husband or kids struggle to hold up your quilts for you? If you answered yes, then look no further.

After I made my Fresh quilt, I knew I wanted to take pictures of it while we were up in the mountains getting our family pictures taken. There was one problem, the quilt was HUGE and I wouldn't be able to hold it up all of the way. We literally had 30 minutes before our family photo shoot and I was racking my brain for ideas and this idea popped in my head. I ran to my basement and found all the supplies I needed.

Take the wooden dowel and place it on the inside of the handle on the spring clamp.

Make sure not to place the wooden dowel too close to the spring or you will not be able to open the clamp.