Rainbows and Wedding Rings

In Part 6 of our series on wedding ring quilts, today we're bringing you a magnificent double wedding ring quilt by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau at Quilt Matters. The pure colors of the rainbow stand out brilliantly against the black background; notice the way in which the colors shift from one ring to the next.  And then there's the symbolism of the rainbow, which denotes hope and prosperity.  Michèle-Renée's quilt has a special meaning because it was a replacement wedding gift quilt for her husband: she named it "10 Years and Still Over the Rainbow".

10 Years and Still Over the Rainbow by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau at Quilt Matters (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)

Michèle-Renée, whose nickname is M-R, says: "Never before tempted to try a wedding ring quilt (those curves scared me!), I fell in love with the simplicity of this quilt's design and the precision of the star blocks. The star blocks are paper pieced and the rings are all hand pieced. It's machine quilted (walking foot - never again!) with rainbow variegated thread and has a bias black binding." This quilt was M-R's entry for a 2011 online Summer Fair hosted by GenXquilters; you can read the whole story here.

Last year, one of M-R's goals was to learn more about color and value, so she set up a Colour My World Challenge. Each month, she made a 14 x 14" mini quilt using a different color. Here are three of our favorites:

Rough Seas, for the Colour My World Challenge by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau at Quilt Matters

Inspired by a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote about hardship, M-R created this mini-quilt and called it "Rough Seas" ("It may not look like it, but that little boat will make it".) She explains the design: "For the quilting, I used eight yummy shades of Aurifil blue in a variety of cotton weights -- 40, 50 and even 28 -- to see if I could get the thread to act as the light source. Then I just played with different water-like quilting motifs in each of the wave sections. Each section was pretty small so it was fun to try different motifs to depict a crazy ocean storm."

Stop, in the name of love... and fire! for the Colour My World Challenge by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau at Quilt Matters

Here is a striking Swirling Octagon, in the shape of a STOP sign, embellished with red roll caps (...fire!) M-R chose eight red fabrics in values ranging from light to dark, to make the main block. This piece is quilted with hearts, loopy loos, small stipple, heart flow, straight lines, lollipop chain,  and a little maple leaf.  There is a story behind "Stop, in the name of love..." you can read all about it at M-R's Colour My World Red post.

Purple Tulip for the Colour My World Challenge by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau at Quilt Matters

Although it's hard to pick, this might be our favorite of M-R's twelve Colour Challenge quilts! She says:  " I used the technique I learned in Elaine Quehl's Collage Tree class... I used white, light variegated purple, dark purple variegated, medium purple and dark purple threads for the thread painting on the tulip and dark green, olive, and light variegated green threads for the stem."  You can see some gorgeous detail photos at the post: Colour My World Purple.  For more quilt inspiration, check out her entire Quilt Gallery.

Image Credits: Images are shown with the generous permission of Michèle-Renée Charbonneau.