Double Wedding Ring Week: Day 3

A lovely variation on DWR is a vintage block called Patty's Summer Parasol. Here is a page from a vintage pattern series. Published April 1, 1953! Look at those templates!

You can see that it resembles a Double Wedding Ring in part. That got my creative juices flowing and I took a paper pieced arc and single melon and began to design. But I wasn't about to stitch it into the curved background! The top piece uses my DWR pieced arc with 11 fabrics. The bottom piece is a simpler unit, shorter and fewer wedges (8). (Someone once said that the top one looks like a flying saucer!)

These are the foundation pieced wedges for Patty's Summer Parasol.

Paper pieced wedges

Drafted the melon and then interfaced the two sections (that's how I teach the class and my pattern reads). I decided on a 3-D prairie point tip and a fusible handle. Everything will be raw edge appliquéd to the cream background square!

Patty's Summer Parasol block

I wanted the parasols to dance across the face of the quilt. I made 9 blocks and twisted and turned them. Because I was working with fat quarters, I was limited in my border choices. So, I reflected the fabric colors in the blocks and added a gray striped binding.

Updated Patty's Summer Parasol

Those umbrella/parasol edges are turned under using interfacing, so no fiddly needle turn appliqué. This is one of my favorite quilts and I so enjoyed teaching it about a dozen times. The pattern is a digital 7 page pdf with lots of illustrations, full size templates for melon, handle and instructions for making the prairie point. Go ahead and make a king sized quilt - you can print the foundation as many times as you wish.

Tomorrow I share some DRW quilts using shortcuts. See you then!