Diamonds Are Forever

Good morning!

It is another beautiful day here in Washington. I can hear the birds chirping from where I sit. I know it has been a while since I last wrote to you, but things have been kind of busy! Tommy and I have moved to a new house and we are renovating the garage to become my studio! It is so exciting! The drywall guys will be here at 9am so I need to get this blog post written!

Seeing as we just had Valentine's Day, this blog titled "Diamonds are Forever" seems fitting. :)

I want to show you the quilt finished first:

Diamond Alley by Sassafras Lane Designs

Piecing with diamonds can be a challenge because everything is bias! Needless to say, a few words were exchanged with this quilt. Sassafras Lane Designs did a wonderful job with their instructions and I would recommend this pattern for someone with a lot of experience. Ok enough on the construction of it and onto the quilting!

I wasn't 100% sure how I wanted to quilt this quilt. So, when I don't know, I use mono filament thread from Superior Threads and I go through the quilt and stitch everything down so it won't shift. The reason I do this is so when I am rolling the quilt back and forth the fabric doesn't shift and distort.

What I did know is that I wanted pebbles in the sashing, so that is where I began quilting first. I started at the top and worked my way to the bottom. I am guessing there must be close to 100,000 pebbles! Once I completed my sashing, I was confident that I wanted to do ruler work and microstippling in the white centers of the diamonds.

You may be wondering what that orange marking is? Well it is a Frixion Heat pen! I absolutley love them! You can mark on anything and leave it for days and when you are ready to take it out all you have to do is iron it! I am sure your local quilt store has plenty of these and they come in a variety of color.

At this point I have the sashing and the inside centers of the diamonds done. This quilt isn't particularly for anyone and I completed it because I really liked the fabric and the pattern. However, because I own a business and had ladies bringing me quilts every day for a week, and I couldn't decide how I wanted to quilt the inside of the diamonds or the outside negative space, guess what I did?! ......... I took the quilt off the machine and laid it aside for a few weeks! Yes, I took it off, completed my customer quilts and came back to it later! You can call it a creative stump, you can call it making my customers happy, you can call it not being stressed out (which is my favorite), or whatever you want. I was just thrilled that I can take my quilt off without a problem and put it back on at another time, all because of the LeaderMate System.

So a few weeks later.... this is what happened!

Feathers and matchsticks! The left side of the diamond is quite large so I needed a design that could accommodate the space and was able to be tapered off at the top and bottom. Feathers will do this! And they are fun to quilt too! These are bump feathers which may just be my new favorite feather. I chose to do the matchsticks on the right side of the diamond because I wanted an opposite look and feel to the diamond. I had never done them before so it was a good excuse too. I think the diamonds turned out fantastic and I love the different elements of quilting to them!

Now you ask.... what did you do in the negative space in the borders?!

 

Well, I knew I wanted something rounded. And I wanted some kind of swirl to pick up on the swirls within the sashing. So I came up with this! I liked the rounded feathers in this design because it plays off of the feathers within the diamonds but has a slightly different look because they are not bump feathers. Then I just filled in the rest with swirls and pebbles and occasionally a leaf design. I know there are a lot of elements within this quilt but I believe they play off of each other nicely, like the light plays off of a diamond. 

I hope you enjoyed this blog and if you have any questions please feel free to ask!