The Double Wedding Ring Quilt - Done

It is finished - and I couldn't be more pleased with how it has turned out.

First a little explanation about the recipients which will make some of the details about the quilt make more sense. The quilt is for my brother, Justin and has wife since last November, Amy. And yes, I realise that makes this a very late wedding present. Amy's blog documenting the planning of their wedding was called Polka Dots and Sunshine, she wore a dress with small dots on the overdress fabric and the flowers at the wedding were yellow. Justin's favourite colour is green. They married in a garden in the foothills of Perth and marked the aisle with handmade pinwheels from scrapbooking paper.

The quilt measures 55" by 65" and is 4 rings by 5 rings making the quilt a lap size. It is the size I had planned from the beginning to be used on the couch or at the end of the bed but if I had several more months I might have gone for a bed size as the piecing is time consuming and, at time tedious, but once I got the hand of it it turned out not to be so hard.

I didn't use a 'pattern' as such but cut everything using templates from Matilda's Own, the set I bought coming with a handy book detiling fabric requirements for different quilt sizes as well as some very detailed and helpul piecing directions and the template designs to square off the edges. The holes in the templates to mark seam intersections was also VERY helpful.

So to the fabric choices and placement. The intersecting squares bringing the rings together were the two colours that represtented Justin and Amy, the green and the yellow. The other prints in the rings included a number of spots as a nod to the wedding's 'shape' theme as well as some other prints to balance these out.

The backing fabric was chosen as a contrast to the front, stripes and spots but the print could have been a little overwhealing without being split. The double pinwheel blocks down the centre is reminicinet of the aisle at their wedding ceremony which was marked by homemade pinwheels made using scrapbook paper.

I echo quilted the rings on my machine. I love the way it looks but it took a lot longer than I thought and really took a lot out of my neck and shoulders. I enjoy quilting all my own quilts but the basic domestic machines certainly have their limits.

Of course it is labelled on the back - the quote is one that came to Amy when planning ceremony readings for the wedding but didn't feel is appropriate to include in the ceremony itself. And of course their names and the wedding date. On the way home with them tomorrow.

Other Posts about this quilt

A Project (with a capital P)

HandmadeRetro: Double Wedding Ring Progress (or procrastination)

HandmadeRetro: A deep breath....and start - The Double Wedding ...

Arc, Melons and Centres - The Double Wedding Ring quilt

A curvy Weekend

Quilting Underway....finally

A curvy weekend

Progress on the Double Wedding ring this weekend. The top is almost done and I have some (needing to be kep secrect at this stage) plans for the backing that I hope to execute this week as soon as a finish the last column.

Fingers crossed it will be ready to deliver in a week and a half!

Scrappy Mug Rug Swap - Sent and Recieved

The Scrappy Mug Rug Swap round one was a smallish affair but obviously struck a cord with a whole bunch of people because the flickr group is now huge. And I can completely understand it because the finished mug rugs are
1. cute
2. useful
3. can be finished in a night or an afternoon.

A satisfaction guarnteed, reasonbly quick project.

The current round of the swap, the third, was my second. I made the tops of these two mug rugs and couldn't decide which to send so I made both (rather than a top and a bottom because they had come out different sizes) and sent both with a little extra surprise.

Sent:

and on the very day I posted mine off to it's new owner and home I came home to find this one waiting for me in the letterbox.

Recieved:

Thanks to Lethargic Lass, for this one!

Progress - Pinning, Sewing, Pressing - Progress on the Double Wedding Ring quilt

I have been making progress and I think I have got into a little bit of a groove.

I have cut a whole bunch of the small patches, all the centres and melons and this makes a little sewing here and there more accessible.

I also made this little pressing cloth as recommended in the little book at came with the templates. It has certainly made pressing the arcs a more exact science and quicker and better than checking with the template as I was doing in the beginning.

I'm almost finished the first column, just have to sew the melons to the final centre and attach.

Only three more columns to go!

I'm trying to decide about the edges. I was originally going to use a template I have to square up the edges but I'm not sure now?

Opinions?

Arc, Melons and Centres - The Double Wedding Ring quilt

It seems I have taken on a lot of things that all need to be finished about the end of November, the St Nicholas Swap, The Scrappy Mug Rug Swap, the 3x6 Bee Holiday block swap and my normal bees and well as this quilt and my Christmas sewing.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not complaining. It is more of an explaination as to why I haven't got further with this quilt this week. Or on anything else. I seem to have a constant mess as I move from one project to the other without much to show for any of them.

Until today, for this project at least.

I have pieced some more arcs. Yesterday I bought the background colour, a light grey, which has meant I could start pieceing the arcs to the melons and then to the background centres.

I was a little nervous about this step, I'm often not patient enough to do a lot of unpicking so I was really pleased when the first melon segment turned out perfectly.

So pleased I forgot to take a picture.

An hour later, after reading and following the directions very carefully, I had this.

I'm so pleased, that even with all the joins most sections matched up like this.

A deep breath....and start - The Double Wedding Ring Quilt

I took a deep breath and took the fabric out of the box, with the plan and the templates.

 I had drawn this plan up per the instructions in the first flush of excitement a month or so ago. The finished quilt will be 4 rings x 5 rings,  generous lap size.  I added the reference scraps of fabric to keep track of the position numbers.

 I followed the instructions really carefully, took a deep breath and cut (and cut and cut - there is a lot of that in this quilt). And then I sewed, really carefully and much slower than normal. I came up with this.   

 A little more time and I had all these.

 Once I added the corner squares I had this.

Only 19 more to go.

Any suggestions on the background colour?

Double Wedding Ring Progress (or procrastination)

Remember awhile ago I said I was going to make a Double Wedding Ring quilt for my brother and his fiancee to celebrate their wedding at the end of November this year?

Well it is the beginning and all the fabric is still in the project tub. So a few nights ago I took a deep breath, swallowed and took the tub down from the shelf.

I seriously doubt it is going to be finished in time for the wedding but I’d like to have the top done and be able to meet them at the airport in Melbourne during their stopover on their way back from their honeymoon with the completed quilt.


My first step has been to prepare to cut the fabric, and I actually did this ages ago. Although I have decided to cut the fabric and piece using the Matilda’s Own template I wanted to put some sample arcs together to see how I would positions each of the prints in the arcs.


And so as not to have to make heaps of arcs and waste a whole lot of fabric I printed a whole lot of copies of the Free Spirit paper piecing template in a smaller size and stuck the smaller squares on in various patterns.

I still can’t really decide. Here is a close up of each of the options.

These are the only two samples I made up without pink in it, which is a plus, but I'm not so keen on the amount of brown.

And I like this one with all spots, but I wanted it each arc piece and corner square to be different and this requires two prints to feature twice. And it might mean a few too many spots.

I think I may just have to take the plunge and decide and CUT. I have been working hard this week finishing some project I have on the go that have been taking up some space on my table so I can cut and start to piece some arcs this weekend. I would like to have enough done to take some to some LQS on the weekend and choose a solid colour for the centres and melons (I'm thinking a light grey or a beige).

Any opinions on the layout?

A Project (with a capital P) - Amy Butler 'Lotus' Double wedding ring quilt

On the 27th of November this year my brother is getting married. Plans have been underway for a little while but with him, his fiancee and all of both families living in Western Australia and me being over here on the east coast I have not been as involved in the planning and preparations as my sister (who is a bridesmaid) and my Mum (who is making the wedding dress).
I did, however, play a small cameo role here. The dress the bride will be wearing has a sheer overlay and the bride has her heart set on this being a white organza with large (about 10c-20c piece size) on it, also in white. Trust me, a nationwide search has been carried out. It has been spotted on finished garments and one, I found a roll of fabric in Cabramatta that was just right.... except it was yellow. If you have seen or know where some of this fabric could be found please let me know. Officially the search for the fabric has ended but i know I haven't really stopped checking and I don't think the bride or anyone else has either. It's not too late till the dress is done!

The coveted fabric...in yellow :(

But I digress. The wedding is a family affair, and both my brother and his bride to be have added or a looking to add a number of personal touches to the wedding. One of these little touches is the way they are doing their guestbook, which will allow guests to take a photo of themselves holding a chalkboard with a message for the bride and groom. These will then bu uploaded during the reception to a digital photo frame for guests to see, and for them to display in their home after the wedding.

During our last trip I was trying to think of something special I could do for their wedding, while not being intrusive and my mind had moved several times to a quilt but I wasn't really sure. Telling me about the guestbook idea and showing me some inspiration pictures came at just the right time.

Is that a quilt I see there in the background? A double wedding ring? Just the pattern I was thinking about. I did think about it quite a lot more before I took the plunge and called them to ask them what they thought. After all, we are talking double wedding ring and, although I don't often get scared off by things that are supposed to be hard, this is a gift for a special occasion and I didn't want to over commit myself.

But called I did. And they said yes, they would like one please. And they also said yes, we like your fabric ideas (Amy Butler and Heather Bailey). Which was a relief to me because one of my first ideas was to go with the wedding colour scheme (yellow, light pink and navy blue, try and blend those colours!)

So now I'm making a Double Wedding Ring quilt. My partner, while being supportive of my sewing and crafting, doesn't really grasp why I would offer to do something like this but to me, it is the essence of why I craft. Making things for other people. Particularly people I care about.

I have the fabric, I went with Amy Butler's Lotus range and even found some of the hard to find yellow spots at Fred the Needle in Penrith. The rest came from Quiltsmith in Annandale and The Remnant Warehouse in Alexandria. And yes, there are a lot of the other spots too.

I have spent some time researching the pattern and method I will use, I auditioned a paper piecing method from freespirit and McCalls but, as much as I can see the wisdom behind paper piecing something like this, it just isn't me. I have a problem with the waste generated by cutting the fabric large to ensure it covers the arc and the all the paper getting tangled as I chain piece the sections of the arcs. Plus I never seem to achieve the accuracy with this method others rave about.

Then, on a LQS tour (I must post some of them sometime soon) I found this template set at Material Obsession from Matilda's Own. There was a hiccup when the lovely people at my Toyota car service centre lost one of the pieces the afternoon I bought the set but I'm trying to move on (helped by the actually lovely people at Matilda's Own, who sent me a replacement piece).
  

The advantage over paper piecing that I see this set gives me is the potential to cut and piece with the small arc section templates as I normally would, and then check it for correct size with the template piece in the set that is included for a quilt that doesn't have pieced arcs. There is also a hand little reference book for planning layouts and calculating fabric required in the set. And a paper template for squaring off the edges which I will be using.

The last decision I have to make is the dimensions. I can't do a full size quilt. I just don't have the time. I was thinking a large lap size (and will probably go with that) but then I wonder if that isn't big enough. I think I'll start by making the arcs and see how I go.

So now, amid moving plans, packing, house hunting, unpacking and staring a new job I'm going to sew and quilt this baby. I think it will be just the distraction I require some days.

The first step is to go home tonight and cut into this stack of fabric that will one day be a lovely quilt.