It’s hard to come up with something different to make your husband each year for Valentine’s Day, but he likes the more easy-to-see-firsthand love and care that goes into something I’ve made specially for him. This year I wanted to celebrate how many years we had seen together and how, despite the ups and downs we’ve had, nothing has changed. We are still best friends that love each other’s company and can talk to each other for hours, about anything.

I thought I might make something with rings and I wanted to try some mini piecing, so I bought the templates for a miniature Double Wedding Ring design from Paper Pieces. When it arrived my heart sank. Each piece was about 1 cm square. How was I going to wrap fabric easily around those and stitch them all together. I decided to make a larger pattern but after I had made several 5 cm pieces, I went back to the tiny ones. I wanted to showcase a wedding ring, not a lifebelt.

The pattern I bought was for six rings that entwine but I only wanted to make two. It was going to take far too long to make the whole thing and in any case I wanted a more modern take on the traditional design. I decided on two half-rings and numbered the parts I might use, so that I could separate out the right number of templates and accompanying pieces of fabric.

I decided on dark blue fabric for one of the rings and a lighter, more ‘feminine’ colour of turquoise for the other, to add variety in colour as well as tone. I chose a different pattern for each piece of fabric I used (which were repeated in each ring). The shapes were so small, I thought they would work together as there wasn’t much room for a colour clash.

I love that the range of dark blues I chose had tossed patterns of frogs and snails to suggest lines from that old nursery rhyme “what little boys are made of”..while the turquoise fabrics were flowers and paisleys “all things nice”.

I thought it might be fun to try working with linen but it looked rather dull by itself, so I put a brightly patterned fabric, also with a pattern of rings, behind it, allowing it to show through. Then I tackled the tiny pieces. I sorted out the three different shapes, the tumbler shapes that made up the curves and the two shapes that ‘edged’ each curve, which then met the kite shaped pieces. The holes in the shapes in the picture below show needle holes from the basting stitches I made to hold the fabric to the template and to minimise fraying.

The two ring shapes didn’t come out quite as I had planned. I wanted one to be much shorter than the other and to cross  each other nearer the top. However I started in the centre with the kite and edge shapes. I did thins mainly because once covered in fabric they all looked very much like each other and I knew I would get confused. I wanted to get them done while I remembered what they were. The trouble is, that beginning in the centre set the pattern for the rest of the curve and I ended up with two horseshoe shapes.  There’s nothing wrong with that as they represent luck but the result was not what I originally had in mind and had got excited about making. As I completed the shapes I had to stick a pin in each one to stop it moving and adhere it to the background, hedgehog style, because pinning it in the normal way distorted the tiny shapes.

Once I had stitched down the tiny pieces, I quilted long utility stitches around the circumference of the rings with turquoise and yellow embroidery thread and added a couple of ‘sparks’ in the centre of each. Then I put it in a frame to sit on his desk.

I did make a piece of board to stitch the backing to, with a view to keeping the piece stretched and the linen taut in the frame but realised that, out of the frame, the piece would be always be stiff (unless I unstitched the back and took the board out); not quilt-like at all. I wanted it to be a quilt, in or out of a frame, so I left off the backing board. This means the centre does bulge slightly towards the frame but it just looks like two rings sitting on a little cushion. I can live with that.

He likes it and that’s the main thing, eh?

So here is the result:

I didn’t have any suitable paper, so I wrapped it in bubble wrap and then in cloth, Japanese style, and added a tartan ribbon. I think I might wrap more gifts in cloth, it gives them a wonderfully soft and friendly feel.

So, until next time…Happy Valentine’s Day, People!