Double Wedding Ring Week: Day 1

Another week, another theme. As you know, I've been "sewing for the camera" for 28+ years. That means that each time I finish a project and it gets published, I get paid! Or I have a new workshop, also for which I get paid. You could probably call me a mercenary, but I actually love what I do and even sew quite a bit for enjoyment. I haven't had a job since mid-March, but I've made a lot of quilts - so, maybe I'm not a mercenary!

Double Wedding Ring: 44" x 56"

This is my latest Double Wedding Ring quilt finish. I started it in 2009. The arcs are paper pieced. Those melon shaped centers are sewn to them for the center of the blocks. The outside is typically sewn in quite a contorted way. Let me show you the traditional method of construction.

SO many curves. So many inset seams. Let me show you my steps. First, making these four units aren't that hard because I paper pieced the arcs. It's that center curved shape (where the wood table is showing through) that turned my insides to jello!

Here's another way to approach it, but still you will have to do some contorted sewing to get the rest of the units attached! I was exploring a variety of ways, but they didn't sit well with me!

Working from the center out

14 arcs (7 sets with cream melons) joined with two of those curved centers. Yikes!

I finally deconstructed this!

I settled on breaking the units up into SQUARE blocks. This unit uses a different fabric collection but the same templates.

But, then I realized I wanted a curved outside. I took off ONE of those floral corner pieces. There is a seam down the center of this. Much easier than trying to do all the curves with a single floral fabric.

You can see it here in a 3rd quilt using Kaffe Fassett fabrics. The next unit to be joined is another pieced arc with the center melon and the corner squares. NO gray background corner.

Same four block quilt as the one above. There is a vertical and horizontal seam down the center (which indicates where my 4 blocks are joined).

I pieced as many blocks as I could for the 1930s inspired quilt at the top. I sewed until I ran out of the cream background fabric. I didn't want curved edges on the outside, so my blocks are squared up.

Tomorrow I'll show some other Double Wedding Ring (DWR) themed projects. I don't have a written pattern for this particular version, but I may get to it if there's enough interest.