Hello my fellow makers,
How about a beautiful, mandala for someone you love? The mandala is a symbol of cosmic and spiritual order, composed by balancing elements that represent unity and harmony. We will be making a mandala full of vibrant colors, fun geometric elements, and feminine lines using the exquisite prints from the Legendary collection and the dresden technique. A technique that just like the mandala has a concentric and circular shape.
The featured fabrics are Flecks Dreams (fabric A), Brit Boutique Bold (fabric B), Collar Ends Bold (fabric C), Flecks Bold (fabric D), Trinkets Dreams (fabric E), Flecks Soul (fabric F), Brit Boutique Boho (fabric G), Collar Ends Soul (fabric H), Tile Blue (fabric I), Trinkets Soul (fabric J), Femme Metale Boho (fabric K), and Coffee Bean (fabric L).
Start by designing two strip sets in the same size with contrasting colors. In this case, I cut rectangles from fabrics AB and FG to center their print with the small triangles from fabrics C and H. Just to get a more balanced effect once all the pieces are joined … and also because I'm a fanatic of print alignment :).
Use the template from the Cosmos Mandala wall art to cut your pieces. If you would like to make a bigger dresden, all you have to do is make the template bigger by following the side lines.
Take each piece, fold it in half lengthwise with the wrong side out, stitch at 1/4" from the top edge, and turn it to the right side.
Press open the seam and align it to the center back of each piece. The top part will get a triangular shape.
Join each piece from colorway 1 to one piece from colorway 2. The amazing part of this step is that the outer side of the dresden already has a clean edge!
The dresden is composed of twenty (20) pieces.
To make sure after joining all the pieces your dresden lays flat, make two (2) sets of ten (10) pieces each, or two (2) semicircles, and then join them.
Two options to make the center of the dresden:
- Cut two circles in the same size, join them face to face, leaving a small space to turn them to the right side and press. In the following image I made two different circles, one in fabric K and a bigger one in fabric L. Then placed the circle from fabric L under the circle from fabric K to give it an outlined effect.
- Make a circle and clean the edge of the circle with a bias binding tape. This technique you can see it in the Cosmos Mandala wall art, where I made a circle from fabric K, and cleaned its edge with a bias binding tape from fabric A.
Finally, place your dresden on top of a layer of fabric, batting and backing and secure it by edge-stitching 1/4" away from the outer edge of the dresden and 1/4" away from the border of the center circle.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and that you take the extra step to make it in different sizes for pillows, quilts, wall arts, or even for an amazing tote bag.
Happy mandala making!
Laucara
Art Gallery Fabrics - The Creative Blog 
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