The One About the Vintage Double Wedding Ring UFO

Good morning and Happy Monday!  I've had a great weekend with my Lars-of-Ours home from college on a four-day weekend.  It has been so nice to hear him playing my piano, talking and laughing with his brother, and just having my family "intact" again.

Meanwhile, I've been working on a project for a client:

Vintage Double Wedding Ring UFO, On My Design Wall

As you may recall, I met with a woman at the end of August who had discovered an in-progress (or "UFO" -- "UnFinished Object") Double Wedding Ring quilt among her late grandmother's possessions.  I thoroughly enjoyed talking with the granddaughter about her childhood memories associated with grandma's quilts -- sleepovers in grandma's living room with her cousins, each child snuggled up in a different handmade quilt.  :-). Those older, completed quilts were greatly loved and used over the years, so much so that none of them survived in good enough condition to be handed down.  Once these blocks are joined into a finished quilt that can be displayed and used in the granddaughter's home, it will be the ONLY quilt she has from her grandmother.  That is why I agreed to accept the commission, despite the challenges.

Initially, my client had hoped to have the blocks assembled and finished as a Queen bed quilt, but we decided to do one (or possibly two) Queen bed runners instead for the following reasons:

• Affordability for the client, since I'm charging hourly for the project
• A bed runner that is removed for sleeping can be displayed and enjoyed without needing repeated laundering, extending its life
• A smaller finished size allows me to pick and choose the best pieced blocks and avoid the ones that have more serious problems
• We have enough good blocks to make TWO runners -- one for the client to keep, and one for the favorite cousin who snuggled under grandma's quilts with her when they were little
• Minimizing how much of the piecing is done by me means the finished quilts will be more authentically "made by Grandma" 

What Are the Challenges? 

As many of you know, the Double Wedding Ring pattern is an advanced pattern involving curved piecing that was traditionally pieced by hand.  If I was making one of these from scratch today, I would probably be die cutting the fabric pieces with the Accuquilt Double Wedding Ring dies, or at least rotary cutting them with one of the many acrylic template sets that are available today.  Grandma made these blocks before these tools were available (I'm guessing late 1980s-early 1990s from the fabrics), tracing around paper patterns and cutting out each patch with scissors, so there are size discrepancies and uneven seam allowances that make accurate curved piecing even more challenging.  

Grandma's UFO Box with Half Paper Pattern Marked with Fold Line

There are no markings on the paper pattern or on any of the already-cut white center pieces indicating where the seam intersections are supposed to fall, and when I folded them to check for symmetry I found that each one is slightly unique.  :-).   

Grandma's Completed Circle Blocks

Also, Grandma was piecing her DWR blocks as complete circles, connecting the circles into rows by joining them at the white four-patch unit, and then attempting to join the rows together with those white curved diamond shapes that have long, skinny arms.  That is extremely difficult to do successfully, which is why every single one of the DWR tutorials I was able to locate today instruct you to sew partial circle blocks to create rows with "S curves," a method that I believe was pioneered in the early 1980s by the engineer-turned-quilter John Flynn.  The photo below is from an excellent (and FREE) Double Wedding Ring tutorial by Jo's Country Junction, showing the easiest way to assemble a DWR quilt top from partial blocks and an S curve seamline:

Photo Courtesy Jo's Country Junction, her free tutorial available here

This is also the assembly method recommended by the American Quilter's Society (AQS) in their 2019 AQS Paducah Sewalong (see photo below).  The AQS Double Wedding Ring tutorials are available here:

Assembly Diagram from 2019 AQS Double Wedding Ring Sewalong

But, like I said, these blocks of Grandma's are already complete circles, and I am not about to rip out and remove a melon from each and every circle just so I can sew it back together again! 

Another interesting thing about Grandma's UFO DWR is that, in the section of blocks that she assembled, she seemed to have been setting her blocks on point:

Assembled Section of UFO Indicates an On Point Layout

See how the corners of her white diamond block centers point straight up and to the sides rather than diagonally?  That is a much less common setting for a Double Wedding Ring quilt, and it was Grandma's deliberate choice to do it that way so I'm going to honor that with the bed runners.

Grandma's Completed Section, Laid Out on My Queen Guest Bed

The first runner is coming from the section that Grandma had already completed, which you see laid out on my Queen guest bed in the photo above.  Ten circles laid out in a 2 x 5 arrangement are just the right size for a Queen bed runner, so I only had to remove two circles and a couple of the white diamond connectors from this section and close the seams that were left open in the white four-patches.

Then I selected ten of the loose circle blocks based on how well they were pieced as well as the client's color preferences (she likes the blocks with the bright red and yellow fabrics in them the best) and laid them out on my design wall.

Layout and Piecing Plan for Second Runner

As you see in the photo above, I'm creating four diagonal rows that each consist of two circles connected by a curved white diamond, and then joining those rows with S-curved seams.  

Where I Left Off Today: Three Curved Seams to Go

You might think that assembling the runners from already pieced blocks would be a piece of cake, but it's been tedious and slow, with some ripping and restitching necessary at those skinny white points where I have no way of knowing where the stitching intersection is supposed to be.  There's also a lot of fudging going on, easing and coaxing things to fit together against their will, and those little white melon points would be so much easier if the seam allowances were pressed towards the darker fabrics, but Grandma pressed all the seams toward the white and then secured them that way with subsequent stitching, so I'm stuck with that.  There are also seam allowances that flip in the middle that are secured that way by subsequent stitching, a few pleats and puckers here and there, and uneven raw edges that need to be matched up somehow.  But the end -- of the piecing, anyway -- is in sight!

My To-Do for Tuesday is definitely to finish piecing the second runner and prepare some quilting options for the client to choose from.  She has been exceedingly patient with me!
I'm going to a lecture and an all-day workshop with Kaffe Fassett (yes, Kaffe Fasett HIMSELF!) on Thursday and Friday, so that can be my "time off for good behavior."  

I'm linking up today's post with:

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

·       Moving it Forward at Em's Scrap Bag

·       BOMs Away Katie Mae Quilts  

TUESDAY

·       Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at Clever Chameleon

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       “WOW” WIPs on Wednesday at Esther's Blog

THURSDAY

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation