Not Your Grandmother's Double Wedding Ring

Double Wedding Ring Workshop (not like Grandma used to make!)

The Double Wedding Ring (DWR) is not for the novice, but neither is it restricted to the advanced quilter. I have taken the scary things and simplified them. I've taken the funky templates and converted some to paper piecing. And that oddball, really spooky center that you basically have to hand stitch? Poof! Gone.

Here's my vintage DWR quilt top that I bought for $40 about 14 years ago. It's sat in my closet all that time and whimpered, wanting so badly to be finished.

Let's see one block up close and talk about it (kindly, of course).

One of 40 DWR blocks

Yes, I took one out of the quilt! Here she is. And I'm going to deconstruct the rest of the quilt because I have some other ideas in mind.

Single DWR block: 17" x 17"

In my workshop, we piece those arcs using simple foundation piecing on paper. Our patches are pre-cut. The foundations are part of your pattern.

Step 1: Foundation piece your arcs

Then, we move on to attaching the background fabric. Oh, no, not like this! Yes, this is the way Grandma would have made it, but we have modernized this. Keep reading.

We are NOT going to stitch the arcs to this crazy center patch, I promise!

Yes, we have to sew those melon/football shapes to the arcs, but that's just not that hard. We use pins (oh, is that what we use pins for?!)

DWR arc sewn to the melon shape

And with some brighter fabric:

We add squares and join it with a second arc.

Add background fabric to the other side and if you look really close, you can see that the center is really now four pieces.

And when I put 20 blocks together (which I started in 2013!), you have a lovely DWR that only looks hard. No y-seams. No hand seams. No sweat.

Not Your Grandmother's Double Wedding Ring Quilt

Here is one more made using only 4 blocks. The corners are curved. It's your choice to either square up your quilt corners (as seen above) or leave them curved. Yes, now you can see what I did with that center curved unit. Splitting it into fourths makes it SO doable.

DWR: 11" blocks; 22" x 22" table topper

I am currently making another DWR quilt using some bright, modern prints with Kona Snow as my background. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

If your guild would like to book a workshop with me, you can reach me at kratovil@his.com. I am no longer flying or driving longer than one hour to teach. And I won't teach this via Zoom.