My Double Wedding Ring Challenge

About a month ago, I found out about an interesting challenge.  I am always up for something new, so when I found out that the NYC Metro Mod Quilters were having a Double Wedding Challenge, I was ready!  About 90% of the quilt was made with silk fabrics and of course the check fabrics, so I named this quilt....Silks and Checks.

First I crazy pieced all the center sections of the Double Wedding Ring and embellished them.  What fun!

Here is a shot of all four of them in various stages of embellishment.  I didn't a get picture of all the melon shapes that I pieced but I'll just say that sewing curved pieces that are not only checked, so you have to get them straight but also using silk was a HUGE challenge.  It's no wonder that usually a Double Wedding Quilt is made out of cottons.

I then decided to hand quilt it.  Another challenge was ahead!  I had crazy pieced the centers onto muslin, so there was alot of thicknesses to go through!

I had a little thread scare too...I decided to use Kreinik #4 braid for all the quilting.  It really added alot of sparkle to the quilt.  The scare was this...the above picture shows all the thread I had left when I was done!  Yikes!  

A few closeups of each of the individual centers of the Double Wedding Ring centers.

I love doing bullion roses..

I also love to tat small pieces to embellish with...

All in all, I am very pleased with the result and the challenge was a blast!

I decided to bind the quilt with some more silk.  I had a roll of this Hanah Silk Ribbon and it is cut on the bias so it was the perfect candidate for binding.  It went on beautifully and when I folded it in half the green didn't show!

Silks and Checks by Valerie Bothell, 2013

Thank you NYC Metro Mod Quilters for issuing such a fun challenge!

Talk to you soon,