Riley Blake Pretty Little Dresses - Downloadable PDF

Riley Blake Pretty Little Dresses Quilt Pattern by Sandra Workman – Pattern Summary

About This Pattern

The Riley Blake Pretty Little Dresses is a downloadable PDF quilt pattern designed by Sandra Workman and published by Riley Blake Designs. This is a free, intermediate-level quilting pattern that results in a charming finished quilt measuring 62" x 68". The design is built around appliquéd dress motifs — complete with bodices, skirts, and sleeves — arranged across a structured quilt layout with borders, making it an eye-catching project for quilters who enjoy combining traditional piecing with decorative appliqué work.

What Is Being Made

This pattern produces a single bed or lap quilt featuring multiple appliquéd dress blocks. Each dress is composed of individual template pieces including a dress bodice, left skirt, right skirt, left sleeve, and right sleeve. The dresses are cut from a variety of coordinating Riley Blake Designs fabrics and appliquéd onto background rectangles, which are then assembled into a cohesive quilt top with a border. The overall effect is a whimsical, feminine quilt with a "pretty little dresses" theme that would suit a girl's bedroom, nursery, or as a decorative throw.

Quilt Design and Block Structure

The quilt is made up of large background rectangles — each cut to 6½" x 40½" — onto which the dress appliqués are positioned. The pattern calls for multiple dress colorways, each using a different fabric from the Riley Blake collection:

• Pink Damask dress: Requires cutting 1 dress, 1 left skirt, 1 right skirt, 1 left sleeve, and 1 right sleeve from the provided templates.
• Purple Damask dress: Requires cutting 1 dress, 2 left skirts, 2 right skirts, 2 left sleeves, and 2 right sleeves — the largest set of dress pieces in the pattern, suggesting this colorway features more prominently in the layout.
• Blue Lattice dress: Requires cutting 1 dress from the template, making it a simpler appliqué element within its block.
• Pink Lattice dress: Requires cutting 1 dress, 1 left skirt, 1 right skirt, 1 left sleeve, and 1 right sleeve, mirroring the Pink Damask in complexity.

Each dress colorway is placed on its own background rectangle strip, creating a vertical or horizontal row-based composition. The pattern also includes a Border 1, for which 5 strips of 3½" x WOF (width of fabric) are cut from the purple damask fabric.

Techniques Used

This pattern is rated intermediate and requires a basic knowledge of quilting techniques and terminology. The primary techniques involved include:

• Appliqué: The dress motifs are applied to background fabric using the quilter's preferred appliqué method. The pattern notes that a ¼" seam allowance should be added to template pieces, or the image should be reversed, depending on the appliqué technique chosen. This accommodates both turned-edge appliqué (such as needle-turn or freezer paper appliqué) and fusible web appliqué, giving quilters flexibility in their approach.
• Template cutting: The pattern includes printed templates for the dress, left and right skirt panels, and left and right sleeves. Accurate template cutting is essential to achieving well-proportioned dress blocks.
• Rotary cutting: Background rectangles and border strips are cut using standard rotary cutting methods, with strips cut across the width of fabric (WOF) and then sub-cut to the required lengths.
• Piecing: All seams are sewn with right sides together using a standard ¼" seam allowance, which is the quilting industry standard for accurate block assembly.
• Borders: A straightforward border is added around the assembled quilt center using strip-pieced border units, a classic quilting finishing technique.
• Binding: The quilt is finished with a traditional binding, for which ⅝ yard (60 cm) of fabric is required.

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