Ring Bearer Pillow and Mr. MB's Ring

You might remember my ring, from this post, but here's Mr. MB's ring (with mine) on a handkerchief gifted to us at the rehearsal dinner with our names and wedding date embroidered for posterity.

We also found this jeweler on etsy, but then just ordered it over email since it was a special (cheaper) order. We switched out the metal to 10K white gold to get this ring within our reach. Jim Dailing (the jeweler) couldn't have been better to work with, he was lightning fast and didn't make us feel lame about downgrading his beautiful design.

And for fun, here's the ring bearer pillow that Momma MB whipped up in the last days before the wedding. It incorporates the silk and lace used in my dress and a button from my Grandma's dress is in the center.

The back has a handy dandy handle for our ringbearer. We used our old cohabitation rings as stand-ins on the big day (mostly because I forgot to buy some decorative ones).

And for those curious readers out there, here's a quick quilting 101 lesson. Sorry for lack of pictures, this thing got made in the wee hours. But the diagram above can be printed out to whatever size you want for super simple pattern pieces. The grey is where the lace went and it's important to pay attention to the grain of the silk when you're putting this together. It's just for aesthetics, but just make sure you're putting the nubby dupioni silk 'stripes' in the direction you desire.

• Cut your pieces with the 1/4" seam allowance all the way around (4 squares and 4 triangles out of silk, 2 triangles out of lace).
• Pin your lace triangles on top of the silk ones and baste together very close to the edges. Sew your lacey triangles to their non-lacey counterparts (along the diagonal) and open into a square. Use a low setting on your iron to press the seams.
• Sew each of your triangles to their squares, open and iron seams. Sew the two halves to eachother, open and iron seams.
• Momma MB added a decorative zigzag stitch along the center seams. If you want to do this, just play with your sewing machine settings until you find a decorative stitch (and size) that you like and topstitch over the seams.
• After that take your large square for the back of the pillow and pin to quilted top, right sides together. Sew together almost all the way around (leave an inch or so open to turn out and stuff).
• Turn the pillow right side out and be sure to push out corners (the blunt end of a chopstick or something similar would be good).
• Stuff with poly-fil or whatever you'd like in there (some of you might want to add a lavender sachet).
• Close up the 1 inch opening by hand stitching (keep your stitches small and unobtrusive).
• Grab a button and a long needle. Place needle in the center, push through and pull tight to tuft your pillow. Sew on the button.
• Momma MB handstitched on the handle and ring ties at this point (but it might make more sense to sew those on before you put the two sides of the pillow together).

There you go, pillow done!