Template Time

It's been forever since I've made a quilting template but we needed one to mark the quilting pattern for the Double Wedding Ring. I'm thinking that a purchased stencil may have been used for the portion that is already quilted but there was no sign of one when the quilt was dropped off for us, so I brought it home to try and figure out a way to do it.

As a reminder, my mission was to create a template for this pattern. After a little pondering I decided to just make an oval for each quadrant rather than attempting a stencil for the entire pattern, so I rescued a cereal box from the recycling bin and proceeded to draft one. It went quicker that I had imagined.

I just measured one of the ovals from the existing pattern from end and then determined it's overall width at the mid point. Once I had that cut I made it 1/4" wide and cut the centre out. 

The maker had pressed the centre panel of each block so as to mark it's centre, so I just positioned one end of the petal point at the centre of the block and the other end pointing towards a corner. For the circle that encased the petals I was lucky enough to find a plastic container the same size as the outer ring and then marked an echo line 1/4" inside of that. Easy peasy.

It took several hours to mark the remaining 32 blocks that need quilting but I was determined to do it all in one day. For whatever reason, it was tricky getting a light pencil line to show up well on the fabric but I eventually got to the point that things moved along. I don't like a heavy quilting line but also wanted to ensure that the quilters could see the pattern.

It's been up on the frame at the church since early January and we are seeing good progress. Because the edges of the quilt are scalloped, we first hand basted all of those outer circles so that everything was stabilized, which took a fair bit of time. Eventually we were able to begin quilting and this past Friday we finished the first column of eight blocks and were thrilled to roll it for the first time. Woohoo! Only 24 more to go!....M