Double Wedding Ring oversized pillow
size: approx 20"x35"
In October 2009, I finally finished a long deferred Double Wedding Ring quilt. Since I had some rings leftover, I wanted to do something with them but NOT another quilt! :-) As I laid the rings out, it seemed to me that they would make a lovely body pillow ... one of those long pillows that people cuddle with.
The mere fact that I didn't HAVE a body pillow to cover nor did I want to buy one (they tend to be expensive ..or at least cost more than I care to spend) didn't stop me. A nearby Joann's store was having one of their frequent sales and one advertised item was a 2-pack of standard pillows for a mere $10.00. Now, that's right up my alley. While a standard pillow isn't as long as a body pillow, it occured to me that with a small addition of fabric and fiber fill, this inexpensive pillow *could* be made long enough for the Double Wedding Ring blocks! (in retrospect, a king size pillow might have worked too, but who can buy a king size pillow for $5?)
The red arrow in the picture on the left shows the modification I made to make the standard pillow the size I needed.
In reality, it's not a body pillow size at all, but still a good oversized pillow. :-)
For this project, I used my machine embroidery designs to embellish the center sections and decorate around the outer arcs. The designs came from JD Designs, their JD133 Curlique set. In addtion to that site, Jericho Design also has many, many beautiful sets for sale at
Oregon Patchworks.
The quilting was therefore very simple: a stitch in the ditch around the entire Double Wedding Ring block ... because this project was small enough, I did the quilting on my home sewing machine. Let me tell you, the control for close-up work on a home sewing machine beats the pants off the same sort of sewing on a long-arm machine! My stitch in the ditch was superb. :-)
A two-track arch and a heart design finshed the quilting in the border area.
To finish pillows, my preference is to put a zipper at the bottom of the pillow cover, so it's easy to remove for laundering. This leaves the entire back of the pillow available (if desired) for further embellishment.
I used two designs for the back embroidery: the TLC frame came from Gorgeous Stitches (design identification pending); it was a freebie at the time. I merged a teeny-tiny skull and crossbones, which I obtained from Sew Forum, Free Embroidery Designs (which I can't find to provide a link for).
The pillow was given to my middle daughter, Rene, since she really liked the Double Wedding Ring quilt (but couldn't have it) and, as she said, "It has red in it; it's mine!". :-)