Lynn's Diamonds {Finished}

I just noticed that I haven't blogged the quilt my sister in-law had me make this summer.

She was building a new house, and needing a quilt to hang on the wall.  She was a quilter long before I started, and hand quilted many of her beautiful tops.  But she decided there was no way she would have time to make another one, and asked if I could do it.



I've posted some of the process photos - this is the Fig Tree pattern she had chosen, along with the pretty Riley Blake fabrics.



And talk about a process!

Large piles of trimmings were generated in the making.



I wanted each diamond to be perfectly square - both vertical and horizontal.

The process involved a couple of rulers and lots of trimming, but I didn't mind.  I love lining up points and trimming things just-so.



Then those nice diamonds were fun to join together.



After talking it over with my sister in-law, I decided to stipple the outer border and into the setting triangles.  Then echoed both edges of the inner and outer diamonds.

This gave me about a million ends to weave in, but the final look was awesome.



I could look at those points all day :)

I'm still thrilled at how well my new Horizon kept everything lined up.



The whole quilt.

Got to see it hanging in the wild when we visited her at Thanksgiving, that was cool.

I've been super busy - Instagram Update

Things have been nuts, with the summer wrapping up.

I only need to survive 24 more hours, only 24 more hours....the older two start school on Wednesday.




I've been waiting on this pretty little Organic bundle.

Ok, I only needed the bottom two Storyboek II prints...but I couldn't pass adding in the adorable Scamper.



I got a few blue and then green hexagons joined during the Olympics.



So Fast!

In my wait for the organic prints for my custom order, I started and finished piecing a Sparkling Cider 64x64 quilt top.



Our blackberry bush is WAY overflowing. Becket and I picked over 10 cups of berries Saturday night!!!

I made freezer jam, a cobbler, and froze the last couple cups for smoothies.



A non-instagram photo...I got the borders added to this quilt my sister in-law asked me to make.

I am super happy with how flat and square it all seems.



And finally, a fun new adventure for me. My first paying job since I left Motorola when Kenton was born in 1998.   (Not counting commission quilts I guess....I actually had to fill out a form for Homeland Security and an application.  Boy has it been a long time!)

I'm working at a super cute local quilt shop called Gentler Times Stitching in Naperville (by the Fox Valley mall for any local people). You can read a little about Brenda, the owner, if you click my link.

They have a fun collection of fabrics AND yarn, plus a good selection of other fiber crafty stuff, and they are a Bernina dealer. Right now I'm learning the store - eventually my official position will be an in-house Bernina tech.  I'll get to learn all the machines really well, along with going to an official Bernina tech training class.  Not sure how it all will go, but it's going to be fun!

Perfect Points

You know when you were little, or even today :) and you get to have a surprise trip to the ice cream shop?

And you're so giddy you could bust?



That's the feeling when I open seams and get rows and rows of perfect points.

The teen boys in the house were not appropriately impressed, so I had to post them.

Definitely loving my new Horizon!

New Whirlygiggles

A little late, but I worked on a 4th of July table runner this weekend.

I cut a bunch of whirlygiggles in large and small sizes. I wanted to test out my quilt math - I have two full size commission quilts to make.

(I may have gone on a bit of a fabric binge, getting just the right prints for those quilts. Fabric mail arrival to confess/document this week.)



I use this blank, bound book to record all my quilt plans and designs.

To get my quilt to end up as close to a traditional full size, without any borders or sashing, I had to adjust my whirlygiggle to about 13.75" square.

I thought a quick table runner for myself would be a good way to make sure my numbers were perfect.



Ooops - I was off by 1/4" across the joining of the four small whirlygiggles. Just an 1/8th on each end, so not a big deal for my table runner. But I'll adjust those for the large quilt. Glad I did a test run!



I was really happy with myself and thought I had an awesome plan to quickly back and bind this. Not so much! An anguished scream was heard when I cut the edge right along my quilting, as I always do, instead of 1" out for a quick turned binding.

I need to recover from it for a couple more days before I post the end result.



In the meantime, I'm finishing up the diamond quilt being made for my sister inlaw. I wanted to make sure she was good with how all the fabrics were playing together. So we took an overhead photo using two synced bounce flashes and my aqua painted ladder. It was fun!



This is what the floor next to my sewing table looks like. I swipe the trimmed bits right off the edge as I go through all 52 of my diamonds.



Finally, Becket bought me a new sewing machine this weekend.

It's even aqua with red gingham!



Kirby's Yarn is a super cute Wii game if you haven't seen it yet.

The little yarn guy has adventures in sewing notions and patchwork or knit worlds.

Pairs on Chairs

A couple people asked - the pattern I'm using for the diamond quilt is this one by Fig Tree Quilts.

I have several of her patterns, and you can count on all kinds of great construction tips throughout the whole process.

One thing she didn't suggest, that I would highly recommend, is the 60 degree ruler.  I happened to have one already, and it has made things much easier to cut the center diamonds and then to keep each color round perfect.



Here's a portion of the fabric pairs I had covering several chairs in my sewing area.  I'm making the diamonds with white on the outside first, and I need 21 of them.

I spent one long evening shifting pairs of strips and diamonds around - standing back to look at them - shifting some more - until I had settled on 24 pairs.  I'm not 100% sure about a few and I have enough fabric to make extras to decide on at the final layout.

I took several photos of the pairs on chairs before going to bed, just in case they were tossed about by a kid!  They're now held safely, as they await their turn for sewing, by a serving tray - with strict instructions that nobody is to touch it!

Quilt Pre-Start

I'm starting a project that my sister in-law has commissioned me to create.

The pattern makes diamonds without y-seams or templates.



Thought I should make a block with my own scraps before chopping up all her fabric. (Down side to this project, she sent me all the fabric. So no stash reduction.)

I spaced on the strip placement, and lost one of my points. Oooops.



Try number two. Much better.

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