I have always admired double wedding ring quilts but having bought a couple of vintage, unfinished DWR’s on Ebay, I had never actually wanted to make one. They tend to be hand-pieced and have missing points, bulging areas and even holes. I have been asked to teach a novice quilter how to make a DWR for her daughter’s wedding and I admired her beginner’s enthusiasm so decided that I should have a crack at it myself in advance of the lesson. I used the Accuquilt Go DWR die set first. The instructions were not good and the pieces were rather small so I decided not to use that version for my pupil. I found some larger pattern pieces and decided to practise joining the bits using solid rings for speed. Sewing the curve is not so bad on a larger piece but getting the end squares to meet the melon points can be hit or miss.
Once you have a set of reasonable rugby ball shapes the next challenge is getting them to attach to the large squashed square. Just out of curiosity, I might have a go at some sort of invisible appliqué method. I downloaded a PDF pattern for MetroRings from Sew Kind of Wonderful which works fairly well if you follow the instructions for their “Quick-Curve” ruler but I still found that the melons lost their pointy end. It really depends how picky you want to be - the old quilts that I have are full of bloopers if you go scrutinising but you really don’t notice them as part of a lovely, finished quilt.
I have certainly opened up a can of worms for myself - I am now determined to figure a way of making DWR quilts less fiddly, possibly by using larger templates. I have even had an idea for a potential quilt that I might regret later.
I found time to give my modified Q24 ruler foot a whirl - a quilting friend, Brian, made me a prototype set of plastic inserts based on the HQ feet that did not fit the Bernina so I can now couch with finer yarns. It looks like this will work well so after a bit more practice maybe I will finally be brave enough to tackle BzB with some fancy couching. I bet couched fuzzy yarn could be be used to hide dodgy joins on a DWR melon!
Not convinced that Purdah3 was glitzy enough, I have hand-sewn some sparkly beads around some of the painted hexagons. I am going to try to finish tinkering with it this week so I can work out what to do with the organza layers but I am quite sure I will still be adding sparkles right up to the FOQ postal deadline.
Part of Sunday afternoon was spent helping Fenella to produce a 3D version of a plant and animal cell for Science homework, as you do;)
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