Yes, there are quotations around that word vintage. That's because it is something very old in my quilting history. I bought a fabric panel that mimicked a double wedding ring quilt sometime in the early 1980s. That puts it very close to 40 years old! The panel measures 32" x 42". I wonder what the quilt inspiration was for this! Double Wedding Ring printed panel quilt: 40" x 52" I started hand quilting it because that's what you did back then! I never heard of machine quilting, but soon discovered it and that's how I finished it. And I did some serious quilter's gymnastics with the backing and borders that I can't even figure out! Here's a closeup of the quilting. I actually hand quilted around all the melon shapes and little pink squares and hearts. I used my sewing machine to fill in the centers. Yes, I probably paid $1.99 for that center panel. And another $2 for the borders and backing. It's faded from all the years I've had it i...

Someone from my local quilt guild did not want this gorgeous, vintage Double Wedding Ring (DWR) top. Maybe it was the pink. Maybe it was the thought that it needs to be quilted. Whatever the reason, I grabbed it. Did I know what I would do with it? Of course not! Vintage DWR quilt top: 72" x 80" This was all hand pieced. It's in lovely condition (not perfect, but not smelly or with more than a small tear or two. The pink is NOT faded (as it appears in the picture above). I laid it out on my clean kitchen floor to try to take a photo. Couldn't get the whole thing in. Isn't it lovely? Then, I had a thought: I wonder if I took it apart into circles (4 sets of pieced arcs) to see if I could design a class or even a pattern? WHAT? Yes, I took out my seam ripper and set to work. (If your stomach hurts by this time, it's ok if you close this window right now.) Here is one of the two sections I removed. The maker seemed to love the lavender and green for those block c...

Time to wrap things up for this Double Wedding Ring Week. I want to show you some small projects that use the simplified shapes in a different way. I also have an updated vintage pattern, Pumpkin Seeds . This also goes by the name of Orange Peel. I used the small melon cutaway from my template set to make this. Pumpkin Seeds Quilt : 34" x 42" This is very Charm Square friendly. The red melon shapes were cut from a stack of red charms (5" squares). I used several black and white prints for the backgrounds. This is NOT pieced (as was traditionally) but those red melons are appliquéd to the background squares! Here is a pattern page from August 1, 1956. Yes, those are templates and you are expected to stitch those curves perfectly! Here is one of the first quilts I made using my technique. I made it in 2002 and it was published in 2004 in Quilt magazine. Orange Peel quilt, 2002 Another way to use that simple melon shape is in a small table topper. I made it twice: once, usi...

Now for combining all those small patches of the arcs into a single fabric and simplifying the whole process. I first published this concept in Quilt Magazine about 20 years ago. These are single fabric melon shapes appliquéd to the background fabric. Stitched so the edges fray (like a rag quilt). Have no idea who I gifted this to! I created it again for my first book (Bold, Black and Beautiful Quilts, AQS 2004) and called it "Shotgun Wedding Ring." I'll let that set in for you - you can figure it out with this next quilt! This is NOT a digital image. You can see the quilting in the black fabric. My fellow editor, Susan Fisher, made this for the book based on a digital image I gave her. A bit controlled in the assembly, but the colors are "free spirited." Then, Windham Fabrics asked me to design a quilt using a reproduction set of fabrics. And I used this same shape and then turned it into a workshop for the Sewing Expo in 2012. Shotgun Wedding Ring It was the b...

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). I used the Mimosa Collection by Windham Fabrics .  (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 using Mimosa fabrics 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! Patt...

I was playing with some of the paper pieced arcs at the very beginning. I decided to interface them and appliqué them to a background square and add triangles to the corners. Pretty clever, huh? I use this as a teaching sample for Beginning Machine Quilting classes. This is a fuzzy picture (from 2008), but I think you get the idea.   4 paper pieced arcs, interfaced and aligned on square These are my paper pieced arcs before trimming and taking the paper off: Here are some trimmed arcs from one of the quilts yesterday: Paper pieced arcs Then I added corner squares and sewed along the diagonal; trimmed and pressed. I was playing with the Creative Grids DWR ruler set and used a single fabric arc. But this was a LOT of trouble, so I only made one! That's enough for today. Tomorrow is a sweet variation on DWR that you've seen here before, but she insisted that I include her this week. I know you'll like it!

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 showi...