Double Wedding Ring Quilts: Traditions Made Modern

Although boasting a fine-arts degree, Wolfe (15 Minutes of Play) writes accessibly about her double wedding ring quilts as if she’s jotting bread-and-butter letters. Her words are warm and nostalgic as she remembers arriving in New York City with $200 to her name after practically running from the Minnesota farm of her girlhood. But she found that she never quite left that farm behind, for her quilting grandmother becomes her inspiration. “Everything started with this quilt,” she says of “Double Edged Love,” a best-of-show winner at the first national conference of the Modern Quilt Guild. Embedded within her breezy reminiscences are solid suggestions for 10 projects: besides “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” Wolfe offers fabric requirements and cutting instructions for the melons and arcs, as she names parts of the wedding ring pattern, and also additional creative possibilities, laid out like yardage; hints for development of craft; and a list of “ideas carried over” from quilt to quilt. Wolfe is boldly mining her heritage. (Jan.)