A Prairie Home Quilts

The tea tote tutorial is finally posted as a page on my blog.  You can find the link on my sidebar under Tutorials.

• That’s one non-quilting, quilting-related computer project DONE.
• I made a substantial dent in the second non-quilting, quilting-related computer project by copying and pasting all my website pages over from MS FrontPage to Joomla.  Now they all need to be reorganized and the old pages taken off the server.
• The third non-quilting, quilting-related computer project remains untouched.
• I also made a substantial dent in a bag of Dove Dark Chocolate during this process.

For me, classes are good for learning new techniques but not for completing projects. This is another project that I started during a class (January 2005) and never finished. DD-R wanted to learn how to make a DWR quilt so I took this class with a friend using John Flynn’s book and templates so I could teach DD-R how to make the quilt. DD-R decided it was too much work. LOL It *is* time consuming.

I just finished up machine quilting a DWR for a friend in trade for some drawings she did for me to use in a couple of redwork projects. While I was quilting it, I was thinking I *really* need to get my DWR done because there is nothing like a nicely quilted DWR. :o)

Here’s a picture of Linda’s Double Wedding Ring Quilt

But you know, those arcs are a lot of work. I need 80 of them for a 54″ x 54″ DWR–yeah, mine is only going to be a 4 block x 4 block throw. You start cutting and sewing your strips together in the order you’d like your arcs.

I chose dark to light to dark. Then you cross cut them–again, I needed 80. Then the fun begins.

You resew *every* seam at an angle. . . I use a needle trolley on my index finger to help guide the fabric (I switched the trolley from my right to left hand only to take the picture, in case you’re wondering.) The seams can be chain sewn. Then comes the pressing.

All the seams get pressed in one direction. You need to make sure your resewing of the seams results in the proper sized arc. I have drawn around the plastic template on a piece of muslin. I match up my sewn arc making sure that it hangs over or fits perfectly in the drawn arc. The final step is to apply a little starch and place the plastic template over my sewn arcs to square them up with the template. So now I have all 80 done and it’s time to sew half the arcs to the melon shapes.