My daughter has made several dresden plate quilts using ties. She washes the ties first and dries them. Next take each tie apart, you get more fabric than you would think. She backed them with a light iron on interfacing, then cut them out. I think the middle one was 20" and each corner had a quarter plate. turned out quite nicely. I just saw a tutorial on Missouri Star Quilt Co making grandmother's fan which looked fairly easy--preparing the tie fabric is time consuming--and you might be inspired by that.