Another Small Quilt - and a Broken Dishes 'How To'

This is my latest little quilt!

I'm a member of the Quilters Guild - and in particular of the Miniature Quilt Group.

The group is 20 years old this year, so our esteemed leaders set us a China / china challenge.  We were asked to make a quilt no more than 12" on any side, using two fabrics that were sent to us.

I was so lucky with mine - I was sent the pink and the navy print fabrics, which are right up my street!

I decided to make 'broken dishes' blocks - and added a few 'Dresden Plate' blades for the unbroken dishes.  (Actually, for the sake of full disclosure, I did try a miniature pickle dish block.  Lets just say that I should probably try it out at full size and see if I can master it that way before going small again!).

Anyway, I thought that I'd share how I made my broken dishes blocks.

The start point is four squares of pink and four squares of navy fabric. Mine were 2" square, but for a full sized quilt I might make them with 5" squares.

You place then right sides together and sew all around them.  As I was chain piecing you can see that I ran off the edges each time, it was faster to do it that way than it was to get to the corner and pivot.

Then it's time to cut the squares into four - two diagonal cuts.

Then open out these half square triangles and press them open.

For each block you will need to do with four times.

Trim the 'dog ears' off and arrange each set of four HSTs into an hour glass block - and sew together to make the hour glass block.

Next, arrange the four hour glass blocks together so that the triangles at the centre form the same alternate colour 'butterflies', and sew those four blocks together to make a broken dishes block.

Using 2 x 2" squares gave me a finished size block of 3".

 You can see that I've made five broken dishes here - and bordered the central one with some Dresden plate quarters.

Once I'd put this together I had to decide how to quilt it.  I knew that such a busy design would need quilting that wouldn't fight with it, especially as I chose to leave the ends of the Dresden plate blades untethered.

I decided to just do three lines of quilting.  One line from top to botton, one line from left to right, and one circle.

To be able to sew a smooth circle in the right place, I drew round a plate that was the right size on to freezer paper, then ironed the freezer paper to the front of the quilt.

Then it was a simple matter of stitching round the stencil using a luscious pink Auriful thread.

Here is the back - you can see the quilting (and the hanging sleeve!).

 And here it is again, in it's finished glory.  If you go to the Festival of Quilts this summer, do try and make your way to the Quilters Guild stall and see the display of China / china miniature quilts.  I'm sure that they will be packed full of loveliness!