First steps to piecing the Double Wedding Ring quilt

This week on QUILTsocial we’re exploring all things Double Wedding Ring!

Yesterday I talked about different ways to cut the pieces for a Double Wedding Ring quilt. I also included a chart for the measurements and number of different pieces required to make this quilt in 7 sizes! Today I’m starting to sew the blocks using the Dreamweaver XE from Brother.

Before I start piecing, I’ll select Stitch Q-02 on the LCD screen of the Dreamweaver XE.

Whenever you select a stitch on the Dreamweaver XE, it will indicate on the screen which presser foot should be used. I’ll attach the “J” foot as indicated on the screen.

I’m making my bed runner using a bundle of coordinating fat quarters. My background fabrics are the light tan fat quarters in the bundle and the dark/medium fabrics will be used to cut all of the other pieces. I’ve cut all of my pieces with a die cutter which is quick and accurate.

For the first pieced arc section, I’ve selected two mirror image end pieces and four wedge shapes.

Once you’ve selected your pieces, lay them out like shown below, so that the narrow end of each shape is at the bottom. This will help you to sew them together correctly.

I used the Dreamweaver XE to sew together this first pieced arc shape for my Double Wedding Ring quilt. As you can see, the bottom edge is a smooth curve. If your arc doesn’t look like this, you may have sewn one or more of the wedge shapes upside down.

For each inside arc in the quilt block, there needs to be two pieced arc sections. Following the measurement char,t I shared yesterday, repeat this process to make enough pieced arcs to match up with the number of inside arc pieces for your size of quilt.

Now divide those pieced arcs in half and set half of them aside. Take the remaining pieced arcs and divide them in half again. The next step is to sew light colored squares to both ends of one half and dark colored squares to the other half. So when you’re done, you’ll have ½ of the arcs with no squares, ¼ of the arcs with dark squares on both ends and ¼ of the arcs with light squares on both ends of arc.

The right and left end pieces of the pieced arc are correctly aligned with the squares if the top corner of the pieced arc that overhangs the square slightly.

As you can see, the square overhangs at the bottom of the pieced arc section and the pieced section overhangs at the top of the square. This ensures that everything will line up after sewing a ¼” seam with the Dreamweaver XE.

Chain piecing on the Dreamweaver XE works very well for sewing the pieced arcs and adding the squares to each end. I chain piece whenever I can because it saves thread AND time!!

Here’s one arc with dark-colored squares on each end and one with light colored squares on each end.

So now we just have to keep sewing with the Dreamweaver XE until we’ve sewn squares onto half of the pieced arcs. Tomorrow I’ll show you why we didn’t want to sew squares onto all of the pieced arcs. See you then!