Single Wedding Ring Quilts

In the last 6 posts we've focused on Double Wedding Ring Quilts, but what happens if you separate the pieced rings?  For Day 7 of our series, we're featuring a vintage-inspired Single Wedding Ring quilt, the iconic Single Girl Quilt by Denyse Schmidt, and an intriguing whole cloth design with some luscious quilting by Charisma Horton.

Kona Modern Quilt by Charisma Horton at Charisma's Corner

Charisma Horton is a custom long-arm quilter who started her own business in 2010. Since then she has quilted more than 500 customer quilts and over 100 of her own. Regarding this quilt, she says: "I just envisioned this to be a perfect sampler type of quilt to showcase many designs." We think this is a clever idea, and a beautiful quilt! Charisma even included the words Faith and Hope (for more details see the original post at Charisma's Corner).

Could you tell that Charisma's quilt is actually a whole cloth quilt?  In case you missed the 2012 Kona Modern collection, here is the Single Ring fabric designed by Cynthia Frenette for Robert Kaufman Fabrics (you can still find the prints at The Fat Quarter Shop and at Superbuzzy as of this writing - February, 2013).

Single Girl Quilt, baby to king size, by Denyse Schmidt at Denyse Schmidt Quilts

The Single Girl Quilt shown above is Denyse Schmidt's witty take on the traditional double wedding ring. The pattern, which features giant pieced rings, inspired a fabulous 2011 Quilt Along at a cuppa and a catch up (for inspiration, check out the Single Girl Support Group photos at Flickr).

As you probably know, Denyse Schmidt is something of a legend in the quilting world.  She will be the keynote speaker for QuiltCon, the first modern quilt show and conference of its kind, which begins in just a few days in Austin, Texas (February 21-24, 2013). Denyse's distinctive quilts, with their clean lines and bold graphics, inspired the modern quilting movement and The Modern Quilt Guild.  The guild first met in 2009 in Los Angeles and it has expanded rapidly to include thousands of members in over 100 chapters around the world !

Single Wedding Ring Quilt, free pattern by Sharon Holland at Quilt-It Today

This vintage-inspired quilt by Sharon Holland is known as a Single Wedding Ring in the historical records. The circa 1890 block is also known as Crown of Thorns. As you can see, it bears no resemblance to a Double Wedding Ring ! There is speculation that the huge popularity of the Double Wedding Ring quilt influenced the re-naming of this block in 1930; you can read the history by Wilene Smith at The Quilt Index. In addition to the free pattern shown above, you can find a free pattern for a 15" Crown of Thorns block at McCall's Quilting.

Image credits:   The Kona Modern quilt is shown with the generous permission of Charisma Horton; you can see a gallery of quilts she has done at Charisma's Corner. The Single Girl Quilt is shown with the generous permission of Denyse Schmidt Quilts; you can see her modern quilt patterns at Denyse Schmidt Quilts. Sharon Holland is a fabric designer for Fabri-Quilt; you can see her collections at Sharon Holland Designs.