A Diamond Collaboration

As many of you know, Julie is my best friend. We have traded quilts, and made each other quilts, and we inspire each other. We have different ways of working, and we get along very well.  At least once a month we have a long at least one hour long phone chat.

When I posted the tutorial for the Diamond Quilts last week, Julie left this reply:

.

Now, Julie lives in Tennessee, and I live in New Hampshire, some 1200 miles away. It may be spring at Julie's house, but we had received over 20" of snow the day I wrote that post, and the only blooming daffodils in my area were ones at a florist's.

I thought Julie's suggestion sounded really pretty, and told her so. Nevertheless, two days later as I lay down in bed I thought, "I should make the quilt for Julie. It would be so pretty."  So I sat up, turned on the light and typed a quick email on my phone and sent it off.

"You want a diamond quilt in those springy colors? You buy the fabrics, I'll make the quilt."

Despite the time zone difference, I usually get to bed later than Julie does, so the last thing I expected was to hear my phone ding with a reply.

"Are you serious? I love Jewel Box... How much do you think the fabrics would cost? (Not sure how much you need since you and I are both stash shoppers and we have leftovers."

No kidding do I have a stash and leftovers! I replied immediately:

"...We'd have to discuss the giants and maybe shop together. I may have most of the medium fabrics and most of the tiny brights.... But yeah, I'd love to do that... We'll talk later."

 The next morning I got up, found Julie's comment about the colors she wanted (above) and went to eQuilter and started going through their categories, one at a time, adding fabrics I thought would be good for the giants into my wish list. (because you can share a wish list, but not a shopping cart.) By the time I had worked my way through the whole store I had perhaps 42 fabrics in the cart. I texted Julie and told her to call me when she was ready.


We spent the next hour going through my selections. We needed at least 9 different fabrics, and eventually settled on these 13. You can see there are some with straight lines (the seed packets and the European currency), some florals with sunflowers, poppies, lotus leaves, hydrangeas and irises, at least one wild modern print and a couple of others. We figured out how much I'd need of each, then placed the order. The fabrics arrived at Julie's house yesterday and we are both thrilled with our selections.

Once we had all the fabrics in front of us, we could then focus on the fabric that would be the linchpin of the quilt - the background fabric of the four patch diamonds. Julie pulled some greys and creams and sent me a picture. What about these?

Um. No. Do you have a pale pale green? I asked.

Julie replied that she didn't buy pastels.  OK, we'll go shopping again.

While my dinner heated up in the oven I went to eQuilter and put a few more things in my wishlist, told Julie to transfer them to her cart and then go to the design board to see how they played with each other.

It was immediately clear to both of us that this watery green would do the trick. It didn't overpower any of the big prints, and settled into the background quite nicely. Bright colors next to it would pop, and neither of us think we'll have to worry about a butterfly marching band.    

Once that decision was made I told Julie to go through her stash to find fabrics for the bright tiny diamonds that are the way into this quilt. "Go back to read your comment about what you wanted this quilt to be," I said to Julie.

 
"You want a SPRING quilt, and those little diamonds need to be SPRING-Y, but not necessarily too dark. Put the ones you think will be good next to the giants, and take your inspiration from those."

But your tiny diamonds shouldn't be too dark, because Spring is all about lightness. Look at the lovely lavenders of that rose, and the green leaves next to the hummingbird,

and those blue forget-me-nots. 

So Julie will look for those in her stash, and then she'll find some fabrics she thinks will work for the medium sized diamonds, then she'll ship the fabrics to me for the next step.       

Julie and I are VERY excited about this quilt. You can read about the next steps on her blog on Monday.