Bloggers Quilt Festival #2

This is my entry in the Large Quilts category in the 2014 Bloggers Quilt Festival.

It's a Double Wedding Ring that I started about 9 years ago and finished last year. It measures about 100" x 100".

It's so big that I don't have enough space anywhere to lay it out flat, except maybe the back yard, and I don't really want to lay it on the grass. So I did the next best thing — carefully arranged it on the fence between us and the neighbors. What you can see in the picture is a little more than half of it — there are 8 rings on each side.

I started it so long ago that I don't really remember my motivation. I think part of it, though, was I was a little tired of making small quilts. I didn't know anyone who would be having a baby any time soon, and how many wall quilts does one person need? So I went to the other extreme.

I didn't like most of the Double Wedding Ring patterns I saw in books or online. They generally seemed to be more square-ish, or if the arcs were nicely curved, they flattened out where the rings intersect. I drafted my own pattern on the computer for perfect circles and prettier diamonds at the intersections.

I paper-pieced the arcs — way easier than trying to use templates! All the green, purple, and blue jewel-tone fabrics were from my stash. Those colors are the ones I gravitate towards, so they are well represented in my fabric collection.

I chose the yellow and red because of the contrast they provided against the jewel tones.

Two reasons it took me eight years to finish this quilt are because I did not work on it continuously, and it is 100% hand quilted. Especially when I was quilting it, I would put it down for several months, especially during the summer when it could be just too warm to be buried under a huge quilt!

First, I outline quilted, and then I designed my own heart-and-feather motifs, one for the lozenge shapes and another for the whatever-they-are-called shapes.

I had a genuine feeling of accomplishment when I tied off the knot after the last stitch I took for the binding. But once was enough, I think.