I started the morning by repositioning the three diamonds in the left wide border 3″ lower – I’m happier with the position although I see I could drop them another 2″ with the bottom border still to be added. I’ll probably leave them as they are.

Then I started scrounging for leftover scraps. I was able to find enough pieces for the top border but I spent a ton of time trying to come up with batiks to work along the right side. Turns out, in order to maintain the diagonal lines I needed scraps at least 16″ long and I don’t have many lighter blue/turquoise batiks to choose from. In the end I managed to set up a gradient that works.

Now for the bottom border. It’s going to be a challenge….

I have very few scraps left in the right shades large enough to insert. I need one brighter magenta (not sure I have anything in the stash) then two more turquoise/light blue pieces (I need to go through the scrap boxes one more time). These pieces on the bottom end are quite a bit smaller so I might be able to find something.

I see from the photograph I need to angle the bottom border pieces in the same direction as the top so the illusion is maintained of the rows carrying through the panel. My inclination would have been to angle them toward the bottom right corner and they need to be toward the bottom left. Good to have caught that.

Tomorrow I’ll get back to finishing the quilt top.

This is as far as I’ve got – I’ve sewn all the diamonds together and the resulting panel isn’t half bad! I sashed it with a 1/2″ turquoise strip and widened the panel with a 5 1/2″ strip which includes three diamonds on point – I’m not sure I have those diamonds positioned right – I have a feeling I should bring them closer to the bottom of the panel by about 3″. If I do that, I will have to extend the other end – which means another seam in that strip.

I aiming for a finished size of ~ 48″ x 64″.

To achieve that I need three 3 1/4″ border strips – one each on top and bottom and one on the right side.

The question is whether I want to use the dotted dark blue fabric I’ve used on the dark side of the panel for the remaining three borders, or whether I want to piece it to reflect the changing colour of the panel – that’s the question. If I piece the border, I will make mitre joins to carry on the flow of the diamonds; those joins need to be at the same 45° angle as the diamonds.

I now need to dig through my fabric stash to see what I have that could work as a border.

I’m doing better than I feared I would. I now have the panel to a point where the top edge (at the bottom of the photo) is completed (it measures 39″ in width).

Panel Partially Assembled

I can see from the photo I should have discarded ALL the original diamonds constructed from the jellyroll strips. When the panel is completed they’re not going to stick out because they’re mostly clustered in the dark upper corner but I’m aware of them and see the vertical lines they add. When the panel is quilted they will be obscured further (but I will know they are there).

I have the bottom left corner compiled leaving one section remaining to be assembled and inserted.

One Strip Still To Do

I’ve picked up all the remaining diamonds from the floor in order of stitching. I’ll sew them over the next day or two.

Diamonds Laid Out For Sewing

I’ve changed my construction method: instead of doing a single diagonal row at a time, I’m finding I get a more stable strip if I put together three diamonds at a time which is how I’ve laid them out, then stitch each short row and add it to the growing strip. This approach seems to keep the bias edges from losing shape better.

As the closeup below shows, I’m getting the points to align pretty closely and when I draped the panel across the cutting table the diamonds lay quite a bit flatter which means when I place the panel on batting and hoop each section the diamonds will be taut when I quilt them!

Detail Showing Alignment Of The Points

I’m feeling more confident about the outcome as the panel gets closer to being finished. There is no way the edges are going to be square – I am going to have to trim all four sides which means the diamonds at the edges are not going to be complete, but on the other hand the panel will be reasonably flat.

I am considering a narrow (3/8 – 1/2″) turquoise inner sashing/binding to mark the outer limit of the panel, then I’m not sure what will happen with the outer border. The top width at this point is ~39″ – about 3″ narrower than I was hoping for. I could piece a narrowish sashing for each side or I could offset the panel within a backing as I did on the Charm Quilt I made a year ago February – now there’s a thought….

I bought backing fabric the other day, now I have to round up all my scraps to see what I can make from them to extend the width of the backing.

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.

——–

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

So far, I’m doing fine! You can see I’m managing to retain the corner right angle – the diagonal is remaining flat and the points are aligning as they should!

Five Rows…

I’ve had to redo a couple of the rows because the points were slightly out of alignment but the last row worked out correctly on the first go! Maybe I’ve begun to get the hang of how to position and pin the diamond joins so the points position precisely. Unlike the previous attempt when I ended up with a mess.

Wobbly Diagonal

Just about there. I’ve spent the past day and a half moving diamonds around, then moving them some more. When I was more or less happy with the layout, I had to make a decision about how to border the piece.

My original thought was to make a uniform half-diamonds border with the dotted dark teal fabric I had planned on using with the original layout,

Border-1

but I wasn’t happy with how the dark edge cut off the colour flow. I positioned the half-diamonds on the darker side:

Border-2

The dotted dark teal blended much better both along that side and the top. I thought about trying to find a single fabric to border the rest but the colour variation is too great (from darker magenta pale blue/turquoise) – I decided to create border elements to extend the colour flow to the edge:

Just About There!

I am much happier with how this feels. I might be just about ready to start sewing the diagonal rows.

There are 215 pieces in this quilt top; I didn’t count as I was cutting – I must have used 90+ different fabrics, two diamonds for most of them, but I used a few fabrics three times and a few other just once. There’s huge colour variation in each diamond – I’ve positioned those with the highest contrast in strategic positions as I try to move the eye around. The photos don’t do justice to the vibrant colour I now have.

This is a very different piece from the original concept:

Layout With Borders

The challenge still remains: will I be able to sew these diamonds together and still have the panel stay flat!

I’m ready to start sewing….

Here I am back again. I began with the unused diamonds leftover from my first attempt and recut them – this time making sure I had a 45° angle at the top/bottom apex. The length of the diamonds remained 8 1/2″, the width, however narrowed to 3 1/2″. That gave me 76 diamonds – I needed at least 150 in total, so I had to cut another ~75+ diamonds (turns out I actually needed 173).

I went to my stash – I collected a pile of batiks – more gold, added magenta, and a variety of pale blue, turquoise, and purple fabrics. I also looked through my scrap boxes to scrounge what I could.

I spent the morning cutting diamonds until I had enough. Here they are laid out on the floor:

Diamonds – Restart!

I was aiming for a colour flow from dark in the upper left to light in the bottom right. Now comes the moving around to balance the colour better. With all 173 diamonds laid out I can see what I have and can improve on the flow and establish a couple of accent blocks in strategic spots.

Yesterday I picked up another metre of the “inner border” fabric from which I will cut half diamonds to fill in the outer edges. I may then add a second narrow border in that same fabric (say 1″ or 1 1/2″). I’m sure that won’t be enough for a good sized lap quilt/throw. I will need another outer border but I don’t know what that is at this point or how wide it should be. I have to get these rows sewn together with the end half-triangles; then I can start auditioning fabrics for an outer border. And the quilt back? Not thinking about that yet.

If you look closely you will see what remains of the original half-triangle diamonds from the jelly roll; I wasn’t able to use a lot of them because they weren’t long enough – my original cutting was at issue. This time, however, I tried being very precise – so fingers crossed this version will lay flat after I’ve stitched it together.

I plan on cutting up the previous constructed half panel (where the points matched perfectly) to make a couple of zippered bags!

We had a snow storm yesterday – a good day for sewing. I managed to get half of the diamond blocks assembled but then I faced reality – if I aligned the left side and the top square on my cutting board I had a seriously wobbly diagonal that can’t be repaired easily! I’ll explain….

Half Of The Top Panel Assembled

I worked hard at getting precise diamond points and I was successful to a great extent. Laid out on batting the slight irregularities in the diamonds would smooth out as the cotton adhered to the batting.

Closeup Of The Diamonds

However the diagonal edge is about 2 1/2″ – 3″ too long!

The Problem With The Diagonal

I could take the whole assembled panel apart and try shaving small amounts from each diamond but then aligning the points would be very difficult.

Wobbly Diagonal

Even with the “dart” the further diagonal edge is still wobbly.

Second Side Of Panel Started

You can see how the wobble is beginning here on the second side – the problem at this point seems limited to the edge triangles but I suspect were I to replace those elements and continue adding rows I’d find the problem with the diagonal developing as the diagonal gets longer.

This has not been my favourite project – it’s been a fight from the beginning. I think it’s time to call it quits. That means actually throwing out the whole thing, not keeping it around as a U(n) F(finished) O(object). Just forget it.

I was thinking about axing the project at 6:00 am after I’d rolled over to register online for an aquafit class next Wednesday and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I was thinking maybe I should just slice the quilt, cut out the fullness, sew a seam across the diamonds, trim the diagonal, then continue working on the second half, maybe do the same thing there if I needed to.

I have a name for the project – “At War With Itself” – I’m doing fine with regard to COVID-19, the mess in the US has had me transfixed for five years. I think this quilt has been a reflection of that angst – my inner harmony seems lost. Do I want to quickly finish the piece with all it’s ugliness? Or should I simply get rid of it and start afresh? I suppose if I’m going to throw it away I might have a go at the splice and see how awful it looks – maybe awful is OK?

I’d no sooner posted earlier this morning when my friend Deb texted me “Saw your post and have a few brighter fabrics if you want me to bring them up to audition? ”  “Sure, I said.” and within a few minutes Deb was at my door with a small pile of fabrics she thought might fit into my array.

I choose a couple, then went through my stash again, this time not worrying about “Dots” but just looking for fabrics in shades that might work with the diamonds in my layout.

Layout With Edges

I cut out a number of diamonds in bold colours and dropped them into the layout on my floor. Looking at my pile of unused diamonds it’s obvious I’ve removed most of the very pale diamonds and substituted much stronger colours.

While I was rummaging in the stash, I came across a “dots” fabric I thought would be dark enough to blend with the rest so I cut out half diamonds for the sides, top/bottom, and corners. The dots are much further apart but the pattern is soft enough that it isn’t distracting from the main panel, just framing it. I will need more borders but I’ll deal with that when I have this all assembled (I may have just enough of the dots left for a narrow border and I will add a narrow turquoise border I think; what else, I’m not sure yet).

My layout is complete. I can tell by looking at the photo I should still move a few diamonds but I’m now reasonably happy with what I have.

Assembly Beginning

I began assembling diamonds starting in what will become the bottom right corner (or upper left – I’ll see later which way I think the quilt will work best).

I’ll carry on with setting up the diagonal rows and attaching them to one another – painstaking work, because I want the points to align – that takes careful pinning at the joins before I sew. However, I’ve managed to align the points in these two rows reasonably well, hoping to be able to continue as I go along.

What I’ve realized is my decision to use the tiny dots jellyroll for this diamond project was a problem from the start – the strips were too narrow to make diamonds themselves and stitching them together set up conflicts I wasn’t able to resolve. That kept me stuck, not knowing how to move ahead. Stepping away from the lighter diamonds and deciding to use stronger colours freed me to explore my stash and consider other possibilities.