Rhonda Dort

Class 4 Information Post 3

From the 1914 Boehm House Vintage Linens Classes Facebook group. Jump over to Facebook and join the group! We are working on Class 4, the Double Wedding Ring quilt.

Have you been busy cutting out your large block center pieces? By this point do you have a quilt size in mind?

Let’s spend a lesson talking about the actual cutting out of the vintage pieces to be showcased in your DWR blocks. Again, you will find information in the picture captions.

Below you’ll find I’m talking about and showing pictures of machine decorative stitching of my Christmas themed quilt..but not my solid arc reproduction fabrics quilt. There’s a huge reason for this! I need to have my blocks and solid fabric arcs layed out on my design wall first. My decorative stitching thread color choices (and there will be many) will be dependent upon both the beautiful embroidery and the 4 different fabrics that will border the block center.

I have two of these vintage pieces so it is easy to show you the “before and after”. I placed my acrylic circle template over the basket, marked the outside of the circle and cut it out. But…it looked a little sad because the top of the circle was just very plain. I put my circle template to use again and placed it over the pretty floral swag at the doily’s top edge.

I like the look of this circle much better with the floral swag added to the top. Can you tell that I trimmed away the basket edge from the back of the floral swag? Not absolutely a necessary step, I just wanted to reduce the bulk.

This doily has an embroidered flower petal edge but this does not stop me from using it! I forgot to take a pic after I marked the circle and before I cut it out.

Did it jump out at you that this featured piece is not a complete circle? It works doesn’t it!

Another doily ready to be featured.

But did you notice…when I marked and cut out the circle, I did not cut through the beautiful hand crocheted edging? Save your crocheted edgings, they may come in handy in your next vintage linens quilt project.

Just another example of a circle cut from a vintage piece. This was cut from a nice guest towel and I had a bit left over with some nice embroidery…but nothing I could cut a nice circle from…too much empty areas left over.

But what’s up with this circle? Can you see that it was cut from the same hand towel as the picture previous? Look at the left side of the circle, look for the vertical row of tiny little open squares. Can you picture the guest towel now? But there’s more…do you see the bottom pink flowers has stitching around it?

This is the back side. Can you see the stitching on the slightly oval patch? The guest/hand towel was needing something else, at least in my opinion so I cut a pink flower from another area and machine zig-zagged it to the circle. You can also see I’ve run the glue around the circle so it’s ready to be centered on the background piece.

So, from one guest towel I was able to get two very nice vintage linens circles for my quilt!

But what if you are cutting your featured block center pieces from something like a vintage tablecloth? (As a side note, someone asked why I had melon pieces marked on the tablecloth. I initially thought about using these designs in the center of the “footballs” but came to my senses realizing how chaotic it would look.)

Because I had done my measuring as advised in Post 2, I could cut a translucent plastic template of the exact size needed. This template allowed me to precisely center the underlying motif(s) because I marked half way registration lines with a black fine line Sharpie pen.

I marked the entire tablecloth. I needed to be absolutely positive that I had enough center block motifs for a 4×6 block quilt.

I marked the cutting lines with my newly created plastic template but did the actual cutting with a slightly larger acrylic quilting ruler. All I had to do was reposition the quilting ruler as I cut around the marked square.

I just love these minstrels! You can see I’ve pinned the square in place in anticipation of the upcoming mchine decorative stitching.

But how do I know the little square is EXACTLY centered?

Remember from Post 1, we reviewed the diagonal folding and finger pressing? IF you folded and finger pressed properly and IF your newly cut square is truly a square…then at each of the four corners…they will line up EXACTLY with your finger pressed diagonal fold lines.

***Personal thought here…nothing bothers me more than when we don’t take time to be precise where precision is needed because it will be very obvious if our feature motifs were WONKY…but that’s just me… 🤪

What’s happening here? I’m auditioning thread. I want to know if the color is the best I can find. Pull off a foot or two from your spool/cone and lay it all helter-skelter on top of your motif. Seriously, this is called “puddling the thread”. Do you like it? Does it play well with the motif colors? Will it work with the various fabrics you’ve chosen.

A close-up.

You can Elmer’s Washable School Glue your squares to the background piece if you wish, I chose to just pin and stitch.

This is a built-in sewing machine decorative stitch directly over the raw edge of my tablecloth motif square.

Don’t freak out at the corners..just do your best. I find that if I try to turn the corner when stitching I usually have a mess. I stop and start at the end of a side and at the beginning of the next side.

And the raw edge decorative stitching is complete!

And here’s another one of the tablecloth motifs just for fun!

Whew! We’re finished with Blog Post #2 of the Double Wedding Ring quilt! ❤️👍🧨💃🏼💃🏼💃🏼🧨👍❤️

Blessings, Rhonda