When Tula Pink announced the availability of her solids collection on Instagram, she asked folks to share how they might use them. My response was that I would love to do an updated take on a double wedding ring quilt.
Two and a half years later, I have a finished quilt. I drew inspiration from an upholstery fabric design seen at our church which consists of overlapping distorted circles.
I used Inkscape to design the pattern, starting with a group of four overlapping circles on a repeating 20-inch grid. I used the drawing tools to distort the circles, which required trial and error to get the overlapping repeats to intersect as I wanted.
Translating the overlapping circles to individual pattern shapes with seam allowances was tedious, but I soon got the hang of it. I printed the melon shape outlines and improvisationally penciled in zig-zag lines for paper piecing on each individual melon, so that each piece is unique.
For the center shapes, I had acrylic templates laser cut locally by Aly Shearer. I'm very happy with how they turned out, and with how helpful they were in the fabric cutting.
A half-yard fabric bundle was almost enough to complete this quilt. From most colors I cut two centers and made two blocks worth of melons; for the few colors I repeated three times, I had to purchase additional fabric.
I divided the bundle into warm and cool colors (roughly), and alternated blocks between the two sets. This type of design does not lend itself to making blocks and then arranging them on a design wall; I had to plan out my color placement in advance. I assigned a number to each color, cut small squares from the selvedges, and glued them onto paper grids as a placement guide, one for the centers and one for the melons.
Each center is quilted in a grid-based design, inspired by a class with Christina Cameli at Quiltcon 2019 in Nashville.
My original name for this quilt was "Where is my compass?" I was not anticipating that the spiky secondary design would be so prominent; as a result, a coronavirus-inspired name seemed obligatory. With the close relationship to double wedding ring and pickle dish quilt designs, I settled on "Corona Wedding Dish," which seemed to resonate with folks on Instagram.
I hid one Easter egg in the quilting.
"It will go away like magic."
The back of the quilt uses Anna Maria Horner's Hindsight 108" backing.
I'll close with a few more quilting photos:
