Diamond Showers

Today is my turn in the Be a Diamond Blog hop hosted by Carol at Just Let Me Quilt. My quilt is called diamond showers. It is my original pattern. It started out as a elaborately planned paper-pieced pattern but turned into imrpov paper-pieced as it progressed.

I am really proud of the pattern and the way I designed it. I will post a design tutorial on how to design your own large-scale paper-pieced patterns.

Dresden plate before chopping off a section on the right. Checkout the huge carpenters’ compass. It lets me draw a circle up to 20″ radius.

The pattern is designed as blades/wedges of a Dresden plate. The diamonds are part of the blades. The blades are 18 degrees – needs 20 to complete a circle. Each blade has 4 or 5 diamonds and no two blades are the same. I randomly picked some diamonds to be the same color as the background. This gives the appearance of diamonds floating or showering down from above. Once the plate was assembled, I did not want the full circle – I chopped off about 5 inches on one side before appliqueing it to the background fabric.

My quilting machine is a 15″ BlockRockIt – which is the same as a Grace Q’nique. 15″ is not much to work with but I find it better than quilting on a domestic.

As you can see, I went completely crazy with the free-motion quilting. I used a ruler to just outline the diamonds – no quilting at all inside the diamonds. The background is heavily quilted using whatever motif came to mind. I quilted this on Sunday in a single session of about 4 hours. I still need to add a hanging sleeve and a binding, but I had to get pictures before the sun went down.

Chain of swirls runs along the length of the quilt.

Some seedpods and feathers. The blue in this picture is heavily distorted.

More feathers and some McTavishing and a funky wheel.

More feathers, a peacock, some pebbles and rocks. An attempt at matchstick quilting.

This photo shows off the texture of the quilting.

The details:
Diamond Showers
Size: 42″ X 56″
Background: Kona cotton Regal
(It is a deep, dark blue-purple. The colors are fairly accurate in the long shots. The color in the close-ups are heavily distorted.)
Diamonds: Alison Glass Sunprints 2018 and 2019
Quilting: freemotion
Thread: Aurifil 50 wt Mako Cotton #2745 (midnight)

Please visit all the other quilters on this awesome blog-hop:

April 22
Needled Mom
Keepsake Moments
Kathy’s Quilts
Kathy’s Kwilts and More
Color, Creating, and Quilting
April 23
Ms P Designs USA
Vroomans Quilts
Marjorie’s Busy Corner
Melva Loves Scraps
Storied Quilts
Words & Stitches
Clever Chameleon Quilting
Songbird Designs
April 24
MooseStashQuilting
Beaquilter
Vicki’s Crafts and Quilting
Creative Blonde 
Selina Quilts
Bumbleberry Stitches
Two Maker Chicks
Quilts By Joanne
April 25
Patchouli Moon Studio
Elizabeth Coughlin Designs
Hill Valley QuilterMageez Room
Websterquilt
High Road Quilter
Seams To Be Sew
April 26
Creatin’ in the Sticks
Cynthia’s Creating Ark
Days Filled With Joy
For The Love Of Geese
Quilt Fabrication
Stitchin At Home
Just Let Me Quilt

Linkups:
Colour Tuesday
Bee Social
Midweek Makers
Wednesday Weight loss
Needle and Thread Thursday
TGIFF @ Alycia Quilts
Whoop Whoop Friday
Friday Foto fun
Finished or not Friday
Freemotion Mavericks
Favorite Finish monthly @ MeadowMist

Q2 2019 Finish-a-long

I’m finally throwing my hat into the finish-a-along wagon. Finish-a-long (FAL) is a link up hosted by a community of quilt bloggers where a quilter makes a list of projects that she/he plans to finish that quarter and links up the list on one of the FAL hosts’ linky party.

1. Baby quilt for the April Island Batik challenge. Top is almost done. Needs to be quilted and bound.

2. Be a Diamond blog hop quilt. Construction is in progress. I hope to be done by April 21st! If I can’t get it quilted, I will blog with just the top. I will follow this up with a design process tutorial/post in May. I designed using a combination of EQ8, hand drawn templates and a programming language called Processing. Alison Glass SunPrints 2018 and 2019 on Kona Regal.

3. Complete the Summer in the Park quilt top. May be able to quilt in June? This is a 2+ year UFO.

4. Island Batik May challenge should be a modern quilt. I am planning to do a light, medium, dark 3D illusion quilt and try some heavy quilting.

5. This is currently hanging over the stairs near the kitchen. The pattern is 54-40 or fight. I made this maybe 3 or 4 years ago – before FMQ. I want to take it down and give it some more FMQ to enhance the curve illusion.

6. The Island Batik challenge for June is try a new technique. I’m planning to make two Cathedral window cushion covers using this YouTube tutorial from Missouri Star Quilts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akKU0zg-qaw . I’ve never made the faux curve before. It will be a new pattern and a new technique for me. The cushions will go on our living room sofa.

7. Quilt the Bali sunrise. Not sure if I will even get this far in the list…

8. Finish the top for the Modern Plus Sign QAL. I worked on this quite a bit last month and I think I can wrap it up in just a couple of days but ……

Finish-A-Long hosts:

• Sandra – Sew of Course – Ireland
• Marci – Marci Girl Designs – USA Louisiana
• Leanne – She Can Quilt – Canada
• Ella – Throw a Wench in the Works – USA Georgia
• Karen – Capitola Quilter – USA California
• Lynne – Tinking Along – USA Maryland
• Izzy – Dizzy Quilts – Canada
• Sarah G – Sarah Goer Quilts – USA California
• Sarah Z – Cedar Fork Stitches – USA Montana
• Julie – That’s Sew Julie – USA Iowa
• Sharla – Thistle Thicket Studio – USA Kansas
• Nicole – Handwrought Quilts – Canada

The Manhattan Quilt

First things first: A big thank you to everyone who celebrated my 2-year anniversary with me last week – you visited my blog, left a lovely comment and started following my blog. The winner of my blog-anniversary giveaway is Barbara W. Congratulations, Barbara. I will mail you the parcel this week.

For Throwback Thursday hosted by Andree at Quilting & Learning – What a Combo! , I want to show the Manhattan quilt. I made this quilt for my friend, Indu, who lives in New York and thinks that the Big Apple is the only city worth living in :-). Every time I visit NYC (my favorite city, btw), she takes us around to the most interesting places, hole-in-the-wall joints as well as Michelin star restaurants with unbelievably awesome food, interesting places of Hollywood fame or notoriety, and everything in between.

This quilt was also a turning point in my quilting career. This was probably the second quilt that I did free motion quilting on my domestic machine. I went all out with a Manhattan skyline, a bridge, and countless feathers and swirls. Just loved the creative process of FMQ and decided to splurge on a long-arm at the International Quilt festival in Houston. My next major quilt after this, the Magic Triangles for my dad, was quilted on a long arm. Similar designs but different machine. Since then FMQ has been a big part of all my work.

I used the cool colors from a FQ bundle of Blueberry Park by Karen Lewis for Robert Kaufmann, Kona White background and a blue and white striped binding. Since I quilted this on a domestic, I quilted them in sections – the center diagonal and the two corner triangles – and put them together with a white sashing in the front and the striped fabric in the back. It makes the back interesting as well. The two fabrics in the back are both from Joann’s. One is a blue world map fabric and the other has the constellations. The pictures were taken in Bar Harbor, Maine, where our families met for a week-long vacation that summer.

April One Monthly Goal (OMG): For the record, my March OMG was to finish the Modern Plus sampler quilt top. I could not finish it. I made good progress but my Bali Sunrise took up so much time, I could not finish my OMG. For April, I want to finish piecing this quilt top. I found the blocks stashed in a shoe box when I was “cleaning” my sewing room. This is probably from 2 or 3 years ago. The pattern is Summer in the Park from a Missouri Star Quilt video. I used a number of green strips and a gold/orange floral print on a white background. This is a really cool pattern that goes together quite fast. I can’t remember why it remains a UFO. My goal for April is to at least piece the top.

Like magic! 15 flower basket blocks, 20 pieces per block, one AccuQuilt Go! and three different dies – ready in 30 minutes! This is for my April Island Batik Ambassador challenge.

I will be part of the Be A Diamond blog hop hosted by Carol of Just Let Me Quilt. I have designed a new pattern and the fabric. Hoping to start construction this weekend.

Link-ups:
One monthly Goal
Throwback Thursdays
Let’s Bee Social
Midweek Makers
Wednesday Weight loss
Needle and Thread Thursday
TGIFF at Slice of Pi
Whoop Whoop Friday
Friday Foto fun
Finished or not Friday
Freemotion Mavericks

Petunia House, Bar Harbor, Maine.

Daisy Chain Mystery – fabric pull

Are you doing the Daisy Chain Mystery QAL hosted by Alison of Little Bunny Quilts? I’m so excited to join in.

The best part of starting a new quilt – especially a mystery quilt – is to rummage through your stash and pull out the fabric. I had fun pulling out all my large scale prints and finding matching accent and backgrounds.

Alison’s fabric requirements are quite flexible. Head over to her blog for detailed “clues” on how to pick your fabric – scale of prints, contrast, variety, etc. She is making two quilts along with us. Her fabric pull is a good clue as well.

This is my fabric pull. The bright colorful butterfly print is Timeless Treasures Monterrey – Butterfly wings by Chong A Hwang. The mottled fuchsia/magenta is Timeless Treasures Studio-C basics in lipstick (I think). I have an assortment of blues and teals for the coordinating fabrics – most of them are from FQ bundles of Alison Glass Sun print 2018 or Tula Pink True Colors. The background is Kona white.

I wanted to make the twin size but the butterfly fabric is just short of the 1.5 yards needed for twin. Alison has an answer to that too in her blog – She says make a smaller size and then add borders or additional blocks. I may just do that.

Looking forward to a colorful and fun mystery quilt!

See what the other featured bloggers have picked for the QAL:
Christina @ Christina’s Handicrafts
Gail @ Quilting Gail
Gene @ Gene Black
Jessica @ Desert Bloom Quilting
Kate @ Life in Pieces
Michelle @ Creative Blonde
Pamela @ PamelaQuilts
Stephanie @ Quilt’n Party
Vasudha @ Storied Quilts