Dresden Plate Fall Table Toppers

This is my fabric pull for making some new fall table toppers. I wanted to make something using a fan pattern and or Dresden plate and ended up making two. The colors turned out to be rich and saturated.  Just right for fall.

First fan or (half Dresden plate) made with a 15 degree ruler. The ruler is huge (Creative Grids non slip, 24") so you can cut just about any size fan blade that you want.  I liked the look of more narrow fan blades so there are 14 in these. Now what?

How about sewing a bunch of 2.5" squares together along with 2.5" border strips? Simple and looking good in these fabrics so far. It could be finished just like this.

However, we're incorporating the Dresden plate pattern here. So the half Dresden's were appliqued to a rectangle and sewn to each end for the finish. A pretty top for a fall table and or Thanksgiving. To me these particular half Dresden's suggest turkey feathers. :) I liked these fabrics so much I decided to make a full Dresden plate to use as a table center piece.

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The blades in above Dresden plate are large. 24 blades are used to form the circle which finished at about 20". The appliqued center circle is 6".

Here's how it got finished.

Dresden plate was appliqued to a big background square.

Square was layered over batting, basted, and quilted around the center circle and in the ditch on other seams.

I still wanted this one to be a circle shape so I traced a 21" circle and cut out a backing. Top was trimmed to same size as backing that includes seam allowance.

Sewed top and backing together, trimmed it, turned it right side out.

Pressed and sewed the opening closed by hand to finish.  It's nice that this is  reversible.

And just for fun, with some of the extra fabric, here's another quilted block which makes a reversible centerpiece. The back is all leftover 2.5" squares.