Hand Pieced Dresden FAIL
 

Please help me learn from this. Did I stretch fabric by pulling? sew bad seams? Need to cut on grain?

Out of town, ran out of cut hexes so I attempted to hand piece a dresden (one on left, right is machine pieced). Lesson learned: do not do this without a template for marking. The hole in the center is much bigger (hard to tell in photo).

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Actually took the wind out of my first-attempt-at-hand-piecing sail. I was doing so well with the hexagons I thought I could hand piece anything. Wrong!

You probably just stretched the seams a wee bit. Doesn't take much. And if you were hand stitching, you were probably holding the fabric over your fingers. That would be enough. I think you did great for a first attempt. Don't give up!

Love the colors of your fabric. Just a question, I thought, when I looked at the info for this die, that there were only 12 blades that made up the 'plate'.

Try it again with marked stitching lines. It should turn out more accurate then.

Sometimes one can accomplish wonders with a little starch (I sure hate to admit that), hand smoothing/shaping, and pressing.

Dresden plates can have any number of "blades", I have seen as many as 20 in one block. At a yard sale last year, I bought 18 dresden plates for $3.50. They are hand-sewn, and each plate has 14 blades.

Wow, maybe it should be 12?? Thanks for input.

Dresden Plate blades can be a multiple of wedge sizes, as long as the degrees of the angles add up to 360*....

The nice thing about Dresdan's is you can "take them in" so they fit!

Have you tried pressing or steaming them? Sometimes, when you're dealing with bias, a little steam helps a lot. :)