Custom Quilt - Double Wedding Ring Whole Cloth

Well I must say that business has picked up over here at the studio, for which I am very thankful, but boy does it mean I have a lot to accomplish in a short period of time!

Back in January I got an inquiry on a custom quilt from a mom who wanted to give a quilt as an engagement present to her daughter.  Her needs & tastes were simple, but as they say, the devil is in the details.

I tend to keep a lot of fabric on hand just for off-the-brain projects, but usually when I get a custom order it means needing to special order fabric.  This quilt was no different!

After having a few conversations with my client, we settled on this design:


Essentially it's a wholecloth quilt with three Double Wedding Ring blocks in the center.  The fabric is all solids, and the text is to be embroidered.

Now if you read regularly, you know that I do not need another hobby or another toy in the house, so I turn my embroidery over to some other talented folks to accomplish. I usually don't like subcontracting for anything when it comes to making quilts, but I know enough talented people in this area to fully trust their ability to execute a design.

Since the embroidery is so integral to this design, I couldn't do very much on the quilt until the embroidery came back, and of course you can't get embroidery done if you don't have fabric!

My client asked specifically for a solid ivory fabric, and if you've ever bought fabric before, you know that one person's ivory is another one's tan, so in this case I ordered fabric swatches from three different places and asked the client to choose.  Since the quilt is fairly large (around 84" square) only a wide width fabric would do!  If you're in the market for wide fabrics, I highly recommend Christian Lane Quilters; they are known for their "FatBacks", and also their excellent customer service.  They will send you free swatches of anything in the store, and will even recommend fabrics if you'll give them an idea of what you're looking for.

My client chose the fabric she liked and I ordered 6 yards for the top & backing.  Wouldn't you know it - they only had 5-1/4 yards left and the fabric had been discontinued!  Luckily my client is a little flexible on the finished size, and since I'm the one quilting it, I can fudge just a bit on the backing, so the quilt will still end up in the ballpark of 84" but might be just a little bit smaller.  You don't really think about how big 84" is until you have the task of squaring up a wholecloth quilt:


And to think I fancied my cutting table was big...

In any event, I hacked off a few pieces & sent them off to the embroiderer, none other than the talented Maddie Kertay of Domestic Anarchy.  She turned it around really fast and sent an extra stitch out just in case I messed one up (which I did.  Ahem.)  I asked her to make her best judgement on the embroidery in terms of placement & font, and she did a bang-up job.

My client sent me an email the other day & told me a little bit more about the couple, which is so inspiring and really makes me want to work extra hard to make this a special gift for them.  Considering what this young couple has gone through already, I think the choice Maddie made to encircle them in the same ring was quite appropriate.  So here are all the rings cut out:


Once it was cut out, I had to set it aside for the craziest week of my life in 2 years - basically nothing but 12 hour days, back to back meetings, and mandatory social events to cap things off.  Oh, and after that's all done, hopping on a conference call at 10PM to talk to Asia Pacific.  I'm not complaining, it's just that sometimes, my full-time gig really puts a damper on my fun!  :)

Anyway, since this quilt is promised for April 11, I needed to make some major progress so I started piecing the rings:


And then of course once you start piecing a DWR, you have to keep going:


Until it's all done!


Isn't the embroidery to die for?  It's just absolutely perfect, the thread color is spot-on, and I love that they are together in the center & not separated like the original drawing.

My next step will be to inset this into the quilt top and then get it loaded onto the long arm.  Looks like I know what I'm doing tomorrow!

To endless possibilities,

Ebony