Dresden Plate Flowers and Bobbin Work

I have been working on Myah's purple quilt all week (the one I blogged about recently). I like to try at least one new thing I have never done before whenever I make a quilt, and this time I have made Dresden plate blocks for the first time. They are so gorgeous.

I wanted to add texture to the centers of the Dresden flowers, so along with adding some ric-rac, I decided to also add some bobbin work stitching. If you're not familiar with bobbin work, it is a simple technique for using heavyweight threads, yarns, and even ribbons to enhance your work.

Since you can't thread those heavy materials through a machine needle, you put them into the bobbin instead, by hand winding.

Then, rather than sewing your item from the top side, you flip it over and sew from the back.

In this way, the bobbin stitching will show on the top. Cool, huh? Here's what I ended up with:

And here's the completed Dresden flower. I just love it.

I'm having so much fun working on this quilt. Check back for further developments!

Sandy