No Longer Sewing in Circles

My effort at completing Jan's Double Wedding Ring flimsy has worked, and no one is more surprised than I.

Thanks to some very rainy weather over the August long weekend I was able to hide in the sewing room and slowly work my way to a finish, and I'm tickled. More than once I was convinced that this just wasn't going to happen, but happen it did!

Remember that corner that I ripped off the existing panel? Well, I decided to try and use it to help minimize the yellow on the 'new' side of the quilt, and it worked. I ripped the vertical seam between the rings so that I could add the circle segments to the columns that I was creating to help complete that big 'S' curve that I needed to.

When it came time to sew that S seam I matched up the seams at the corners and then found the middle of the cream centres of each block, finger pressed them and then attached them to the relevant arc. It meant that half of the time the cream curve was facing me and the other half it was the pieced arc. Surprisingly, both systems worked well as long as that centre point was accurately marked and pinned.

I don't think I've seen a Double Wedding Ring lap quilt but it's very sweet at this size. And the strong colours are lovely, a very different look from the one that our quilting circle finished off earlier in the year.

This one is scrappy with a capital 's', so lots of treasures to unearth as you work your way through it. These vintage cherries are a favourite that show up several times...

as is this sweet almost checked green, which is modern day.

I found a piece of the cream fabric in the project box large enough for a backing so I will send that along to the folks at Quilts for Survivors as well.

Interesting that in all of the years that I have been quilting, this pattern has never been on my list and yet this year I've worked on two of them! Can't wait to let Jan know that her project will now find its forever home....M 

My Nine-Patches Take a Getaway

Wanting some hand stitching to do during a short getaway, I got busy and threw the scrappy Nine-Patches that I've been working on lately for another QFS quilt up on the design wall. I wanted to lay everything out and then pin the rows/columns so that I could easily stitch in the car or as we sat and gabbed. 

Not sure just how many I had made, I discovered that I needed a few more. I also decided that I wanted it one row longer (you know my aversion to square quilts!) so I whipped up a few on the machine in order to meet my deadline. The blocks weren't in any particular order and I made very few tweaks to the final layout, which I really like. Those 3 1/2" border blocks make me happy. I snapped a photo for insurance so that I had a reference in case I got myself messed up.

I made a rough sketch of how everything would go together, numbered and pinned each row/column, and everything was tucked into a bin with thread and scissors. Time to hit the road!...M

It's Decided

I've taken the plunge - the Double Wedding Ring quilt will be a lap quilt and not full-sized. My intention when picking up Jan's WIP was to make it for Quilts for Survivors and that's what I'll do. It also makes it much more likely that it will some day be a finish. I haven't let my mind move forward too too much as to just how to finish it yet - just dealing with the bits and bobs in front of me - but I'm counting on the quilting gods to have my back.

So, I've taken the panel that is all sewn together and ripped out the seam that joins the bottom two rings to the rest of the top, planning to make it 4W x 5H rings.

And I'm left with a corner piece that looks like this. It may be the start of something else but for now its removal has helped move me along. I've just parked it in a corner of the design wall.

Then I started puzzling just how this baby is to come together. I've been referring to Christine Baker's tutorial and the goal is to have columns come together in an elongated S seam. But because I jumped into this midstream, instead of having two consistent shapes, I'm working with an interesting combo of partial rings, like tops of rings...

right sides of rings, and ...

corners of rings (if that's possible...).

I'm just talking myself through it like someone trying to convince a jumper not to jump, but progress is being made....M

My Little Dilemma

Off and on I've been assembling more ovals for the Double Wedding Ring quilt that I showed you in May. Jan left us a full box of bits and pieces before she moved and I'm keen to avoid it being relegated to a life on the shelf, never to be seen again. I decided to put the piece that is assembled up on the wall and see how many more I need to make and then make a plan of action.

This will be a Quilts for Survivors flimsy and they like lap-sized quilts approximately 48" x 64", so if I go that route, I'm thinking I need four circles wide by five long. You can see by the puddle of quilt on the floor that if I make up the entire quilt using all of the bits that have been prepared it would be considerably larger.

It's really quite striking when you get it up on the wall.

After placing two more columns of ovals it looks like I'd need only three to make this work for the lap size, which was a very pleasant surprise as it's proving to be a bit challenging working with pieces that aren't always consistently cut to come out with a good product. The dilemma as to whether I go small or large with this one seems to be tilting in favour of the small size.

So I'm sewing the missing three ovals and hope that a decision will be made along the way.

I pull ovals randomly from the box to work on (many have already been organized and pinned to a small cream oval piece) and it's interesting to see, now that they are on the wall, how so many have yellow in them compared to the circles already sewn together.

Pretty soon I'll have to figure out how to assemble complete circles. If you're old enough to remember, it's feeling sort of like cracking the secret of how they get the caramel into the Caramilk bars 😉....M