Now I’m fighting the panel. I was so careful when I cut the diamonds – they really are all the same size with 45° and 135° angles at the corners. I’ve been so careful about sewing 1/4″ seams and getting the points to align – and I’m close, but the panel isn’t quite cooperating!

Shaping The Evolving Panel

I’ve taped the side and top edges to my cutting board so those two sides are square. I’ve set up the diagonal straight. However there’s now a slight buckle along the diagonal edge which gets worse with each additional row. So I’ve sprayed the hell out of the diagonal edge, laid rulers on top of the fabric, and now I will let it dry thoroughly. Tomorrow I’ll steam that edge before adding more rows.

I’ve reached the bottom right corner – that’s the length of the panel (at the top left of the photo); there are another five rows to reach the second top corner which will be on the right (that’s the width of the piece). I’m ending up with a length of 58″; I expect the finished width will be close to 42″. the proportions of the panel are not too bad – close to  6 x 9. That means a 3″ border around the panel will give me a final size of approximately 48″ x 64″.

In the meantime, I’m struggling to maintain a square piece that lays flat! It’s probably time to start at the opposite corner and begin building toward this diagonal. That will leave four diagonal rows between the two corners to be fit between. That’s probably a better plan than trying to continue building out from the section I have completed.

This afternoon I was able to keep the two diagonal rows I worked on straight. The problem I ran into was with the slight diagonal fullness in the corner segment I joined them to – adding two more rows just increased the misalignment, which is why I’m trying to “flatten” the diagonal. I know I can incorporate a bit of play when I lay the panel on batting – I can pin out some of the fullness to make it less obvious. Nevertheless, I do want my corners to be square. That’s what I’m fighting to achieve right now.

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It’s evening and the panel has dried – the top right corner is square; the diagonal is straight (the whole panel needs a good steam pressing)

From The Bottom Right Corner