Double Wedding Ring Quilt for my besty friend!

So if someone told me a year ago that I’d be giving my best friend for her upcoming wedding a handmade double wedding ring quilt, I’d have called them crazy. But now it’s that year later and I just finished a queen/king size of said quilt. I say queen/king because it’s in between those two sizes. It was on http://craftster.org/ that I saw this pattern and thought that it was really cool, not realizing it’s probably one of the hardest patterns out there. Reading on about it, found that it was a traditional gift for weddings, so I bought an acrylic template pattern and stared at it for about a month. I even attempted to make a ring with scraps to see if I could sew on a curved line, disaster. You see, a year ago I’d never made a quilt of any kind. I mean I knew how to sew but not quilt. I’ve made about 10 quilts now, but fairly easy in comparison.

Finally in August of 2009 I went and bought the Mark Lipinski line Califon black and white and again stared at the pattern. I tried again with scraps before I cut up this beautiful fabric and realized my machine’s ¼ seam was off. Once it was fixed, it worked. There was my AHA moment. In September I made my first ring and then my second and then by the end of November I had a 6 by 7 ring double wedding ring quilt top. I added two borders and then made the quilt back. There’s a quilt store here in Ottawa (http://www.quiltypleasures.ca/) where you can rent a long arm quilter (much fun!). I thought I’d try just outlining each ring but when that looked like crap, I pulled it all out and started to just free motion and have some fun. I added hearts and stars and even put my name into the border. After blowing a fuse on the machine and a week’s break in between, it took about 3ish hours in total to finish. This past weekend I cut and sewed on the binding. When finished, I gotta tell you that I was a little misty and then my husband was like, are you sure you want to give it away? Yes, yes I am! So here it is, 4 months (not continuously) of labour and love and voila!

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