Diamond Jubilee, Gifted

So, do you think my niece likes her quilt?

Yup, she loves it.



I'm going to be off line for about a week, so if I don't post between now and then, don't worry. I've got something big I've been meaning to do for a while and it's going to take all my attention. I'll be back about June 27th or so.

Diamond Jubilee, Quilted

Here is the Diamond Jubilee quilt quilted and trimmed. I will make the binding tonight.

If you want to know why I've been absent the last few days, you'll have to visit Millie's blog and see what I've been doing out in the garden.  One big decision I made was to hire an exterminator to spray my property against ticks and mosquitoes this summer. Regular readers know I got Lyme Disease last year and am unwilling to go through that again.

Valerie Has Questions... I Have Answers

The internet can be a wonderful place. I met three of my best friends over the internet, from all over the country and the world.  It's also where I meet quilters I have inspired. This is the most wondrous.

One of them is Valerie from Purple Boots and Pigtails. She wrote me a letter about a year ago saying I had reawakened her love of quilting. You can read it here. Someday I gotta meet this girl.  Valerie is the quilter I made the Kona solid word JUNGLE for.

Anyway.

 
On yesterday's post, Valerie asked a few questions and they made me think. Although I showed you how I designed the quilt, I didn't show you how I made it.  So here are Valerie's questions.

 "...are you planning to have a straight edge for binding or leave all those delicious diamonds as they are?"
 I'm planning on having a straight edge. I plan to cut it outside the vertical rows of small diamonds.

"Which leads me to ... if you square it off, will you cut it before or after Chris works her magic?"
I'll cut it off after Chris quilts it. I find that it helps to not make a decision to trim a quilt before it's quilted. Chris often makes magic happen where I didn't see it earlier, so I don't rush. I can always trim a quilt down, I can't add.

"This top will be super stretchy with all those bias cuts, so I wonder if trimming after might be helpful?"
Absolutely. In fact Valerie's most recent post talked about a quilt with mitered corners that got stretched out.  My quilt is made with a few hundred diamonds and each piece has two bias edges. I don't want it to stretch, so I haven't showed it off to anybody because I don't want to stretch those edges. Right now the quilt is folded up so it can't stretch. I won't be holding it up until it's quilted.

"I like the back, it reinforces that my eye is drawn first to all the littlest diamonds that act like stripes. Those are the colours in your backing fabric."
It's funny, but that's what good design does. It makes you see connections. The colors of my tiny diamonds are actually all colors - yellow, orange, red, hot pink, purple, blue, green and teal.

"Glad you steered away from the predictable creams, yellows and golds...much too matchy matchy."
 Me too. As I've said before, the quilt usually tells you what it wants, and if you're smart, you'll listen. This quilt did not want yellow or anything tiny.



 "Lastly, did you have a 60° diamond ruler or did you cut with a straight ruler?"

 I used this ruler, which is the one you used to make your Gravity quilt. I used blue tape to outline the 4" diamonds and the 2" diamonds. I ordered a 4" diamond template from another company online, and it never arrived until after the quilt was finished, so I cut all my pieces - one by one - with this template. It was a royal pain in the patootie. For the small four patch diamonds, I sewed together a pair of 2-1/2" strips and then used the template to cut pairs which I then sewed together.

I only had a yard of this fabric, and couldn't get as many perfect diamonds as I needed, so for a couple of them, I pieced them together, matching the pattern.

You all watched as I designed the quilt on the wall, putting something up, stepping back (with my glasses OFF so the fine details wouldn't distract me, but so I could still see the masses of color. I tried to avoid "blobs" of  dark areas and "holes" of too many light ones. I tried to distribute the colors and not make things too repetitious. I inverted some of the fussy cut blocks so they all wouldn't point in the same direction.

I literally cut one piece, put it up on the wall, stepped back, decided if it was OK or not, and then cut another. When the fabrics I had pulled looked too dark, I went through my stash to find something better. Piece by piece the quilt grew. I didn't get too bogged down with details, and tried to keep it fresh and vibrant. It didn't need to be perfect, and yet I think it is.

I am really, really happy with it, and am looking forward to making my next quilt, and hope I can keep it as loosey-goosey as this one.

And Pat, I find if I know I'm making a quilt to give away, I don't get attached to it.

Valerie, thanks for the questions. I enjoyed answering them. Anybody else?

Backing for the Jubilee

After all my crock about how this quilt had to have a subdued backing, I shopped several online fabric sites and found absolutely NOTHING that (in my hairdresser's words) "lifted my skirt."

Until I found this Kaffe print. A version of this in a different colorway is in the quilt itself, but this fabric just screamed "ME! Pick ME!"

So I did.  Of course it isn't quite this gigantic, but eight yards are on their way to me even as you read this.

And at this stage of the game, the binding might be a blue or a green or a teal. That will change, undoubtedly, when I get the quilt back from Chris. And since I put my nephew's name on the back of his quilt, my niece's name will have to go on the back of hers.  Guess what I'll be doing this weekend?

Diamond Jubilee is a flimsy!

I assembled all the diamonds into long rows, then pinned them together.

Then sewed them all up.

All quilt flimsies look like stained glass when you shine light through them, and this is no exception. It was so pretty I took a picture.

So here it is, the finished flimsy. I know I thought its name would be Diamond Tapestry, but the colors are far too vibrant, so Diamond Jubilee it is.

It's about 68 x 80 inches (173 x 203 cm).


btw, the movie, The Martian, was very good and I highly recommend it.

Construction Continues

I worked on this most of the day on Saturday. This, above, is three big pieces.

I texted my niece (she lives on the West Coast, across the country from me) told her she could see pictures of her quilt on my blog. She loves it, and is very excited.

I sewed all the remaining components together. I need to make a few four patch diamonds for the left edge.  These pieces are on the floor because as I was removing a few from the top part of the wall so I could sew them together I lost my balance, fell off the stool, and fell against the door before landing in a heap on the floor.  Ouch.



I took a break, made dinner, and then went back to work, but when I did this...
 

I knew it was time for bed.

Construction In Progress

It's construction time for the Diamonds quilt, and since it's based on a 60-degree diamond, there are lots of bias edges which need to be handled carefully and as little as possible. The vertical edges of the quilt are the centers of the tiny colored diamonds, and I needed to add some extra fabric on the side, so that's why the right edge looks like an elongated sawtooth. We'll see how that goes. As you can see there's at least one of those added-on diamonds where I obviously lost my train of thought.  Oh well. That may need to come out later. If it does, it does, no big deal.

Pat J asked if I would add a border or just bind it. Pat, I can't answer that question until all the pieces are sewn together. I did go online fabric shopping last night for a backing, and this may be a tough one. I usually use a large print (like the Philip Jacobs prints in the large diamonds) but this is so busy on the front, it may need something a lot calmer on the back.  At any rate, I have learned never to select a backing fabric until the top is complete, so there's no point worrying.

With a quilt this complex. it's useful to have a photograph nearby when I'm sewing the elements together. 

I hope to have the flimsy complete by the end of the weekend. The house is clean and doesn't need any work. With the windy weather expected I may have to move some garden pots around and bring light things in the house or move them to the shed.

I'm also going to the movies to see The Martian tomorrow. I read the book, and emailed my California pal who recommended it to me when, halfway through, I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO KNOW if he got off Mars alive. Naturally she wouldn't tell me. I think I read the book in like three days.

Diamonds Are Fun!

I think this is it. I'll start sewing it up this weekend. I'm very happy.

This quilt is for an 18 year old girl who'll be graduating from high school in June. I wanted something fresh, vibrant, youthful and colorful.  This quilt scores on all points and, as I looked at on the design wall a phrase came to my mind...

"This isn't your grandmother's quilt."

It sure isn't!


By the way... Every. Single. Fabric. in this quilt came from my stash. I didn't buy anything, although a quilt like this will surely need a backing every bit as avant-garde.

Diamond Tapestry

I finished cutting all the big diamonds, so I thought I'd see what they looked like up on the design wall.

That looked ok, sorta, but I knew I needed another vertical row.

And then, of course, I had to rearrange them.

Then I started cutting the medium sized diamonds and throwing them up on the wall. I quickly realized that some of the fabrics I had pulled were a bit on the dark side, so I raided the stash. (Duh!)

This arrangement is by no means final, I just need to get a feel for where this wants to go. I know where I want it to go, but I really need the little four patch diamonds that will fill in all the white spaces before I know for sure.

A Shift and an Idea

Like these diamonds? I do too. Hold that thought....

I'm sure you remember this quilt. It's a favorite of my Mother and my Son, and pretty much anybody else who's seen it.
 

There's a story here.  I promised my niece I'd make her a quilt for her high school graduation, which will happen in June of 2016. The last time I saw her she said she liked sage green and lavender. Well those colors, though lovely, don't make for an exciting combination. I emailed her a couple of times over the summer, asking if she was sure about those colors, but I didn't hear from her. So I decided to gift her the Petals quilt.  My Mother thought it was a great idea. My son, not so much.

After a lot of back and forth, my Son and DIL asked to buy the quilt. Well, I won't take money from my son, so I said if they paid for the quilting, they could have the quilt. They agreed.


So I had to go back to the drawing board for my niece. Fortunately she had a birthday last week and I was able to chat with her. She gave me permission to make any quilt I wanted.  Whee!

I started browsing through my books for some ideas and found this in Colorific, by Pam Goecke Dinndorf. Then I started pulling fabrics.

I started getting excited about it. I had to work out some details about what kind of diamonds those were and finally decided to make them 60 degrees.

This is already fun.

 Yes, I can already tell this is going to be very cool.

Quilting One Handed

My niece is visiting from Oregon and asked if she could make a kitty quilt for her cat using my scraps.  Of course! She sorted through the pieces, found the ones she liked and assembled the top and bottom (it's reversible).

Mind you, this girl has a broken arm and had to do all of this one handed. DN just loved the knee lift, and the automatic thread cutter!

I helped by making the quilt sandwich and setting up the walking foot on my machine.  She did all the quilting herself. I helped her add the binding.  She was very happy with the results.

As she should be!

I think she did a great job!