It started exactly 6 weeks ago, this obsession that I think about way too much during the course of the day. I saw this quilt. Oh, yes, that glorious quilt! And it has a friend/sibling/long lost fraternal twin. I was beyond smitten. I was mesmerized. The colors resonated within me. Yes, I am fully aware of just how pretentious that sounds, but it’s the crazy ass truth. I kept thinking and thinking about it, talking to every quilty friend about it, showing the photos to my kids and students and pretty much everyone I see during the course of the day because everyone must behold its gorgeosity.

And then I started sewing…. Or more like cutting, glueing, stitching, plotting, ogling, sewing some more:

I have about another 80 or more arcs/wedges to piece, but I’ve already started playing with background and inside bits:

So now I have a question: Is this a Double Wedding Ring or a Pickle Dish? My understanding is that a Double Wedding Ring has bars/plain ol’ strips in the arcs, like the inspiration quilt, and that Pickle Dish quilts have triangles/points in the arcs. Both Bill Volkening and Barbara Brackman agree with this. But then I often hear what I think of as Double Wedding Ring quilts with the longer strips in the arcs referred to as Pickle Dish. For instance, Kaffe Fassett calls his version a Pickle Dish. But then Denyse Schmidt in her book Modern Quilts Traditional Inspiration has a Tobacco Leaf quilt, which she says is more commonly known as Pickle Dish or Indian Double Wedding Ring, and it has triangles in the arcs. Soooo, I’m confused by the terminology. Is it totally subjective? Are they all the same thing? Is this like the Bear Paw/Duck Foot block being the same thing known by different names in different regions of the country? Someone shed some light at me here.

Meanwhile, if you need to find me, I’ll be making more strip-striped arcs.