I was looking at the entries in a linky party on Friday and I saw a picture of the Fresh Diamond quilt in several colourways on the Samelia’s Mum blog. I had seen the quilt before but here Anorina showed it mocked up on EQ8 with some dark fabric as the background. It immediately caught my eye and I spent the workday thinking about maybe making it. I’ve wanted to do a triangle quilt for someone and why not now as a long weekend project? Immediately, I thought of making it with a dark background and scrappy brights as knew had squares already cut from other projects and enough yardage of a charcoal grey background to make this work.
So after work I confirmed that while I had quite a few squares already cut I didn’t have enough solids/tone on tones to make this work without cutting some more. Then I go back and read the pattern. My squares are the wrong size by 1/2 an inch but so long as I don’t mind a quilt a slightly different size than hers, that was no reason start cutting from scratch. So my quilt would be a bit smaller, no big deal I can always add a column or row or just have a quilt that’s slightly smaller.
I started cutting the background and the extra squares I needed and before I knew it I was sewing them together.
Sewing the was fun, the trimming afterwards not so much but it went relatively fast
Time to start laying them out.
I was working on this layout with Marc and he was going on about how I always do random scrappy and why didn’t I do something different this time. So I changed the placement of the colours and came up with this layout
We both liked this layout better than the first one. I have to say doing the layout of the blocks did take some time as the pattern took a while for me to grasp in terms of the orientation of the half square triangles.
So I started sewing blocks together, then rows etc. I have to admit Jack came out to play once or twice when I rotated a piece or two by accident. Sadly though it was Jack the Ripper and not Jack Daniels that came out. A good thing though as I wouldn’t have kept anything straight with even a drop of alcohol in my system.
I ended up adding a few rows to the original pattern.
To finish it off I added a border the width of my blocks. Marc suggested I carefully thumbtack the quilt to our fence for pictures!
I’m calling this my Diamond Brights quilt top. I’m now deciding whether to try quilting it at home or waiting until the quilting studio where I rent time on one of their long arms is open. I have to check the stash but if I recall correctly I have something that should coordinate nicely to use for backing.
I’d say my biggest question is what to do next, but for the state my sewing room is now in. Cleaning up and putting away fabric is next on the agenda.
Definitely a yummy quilt. I really like your bright colors.
I love the colors and so glad you went with this layout! It’s beautiful!
Are you serious — you just discovered this pattern on Friday and three days later, you’ve cut, pieced, and assembled the entire quilt top?!!! WOW. This looks great and will surely be fun for you to quilt. Isn’t it funny how a particular quilt pattern is popping up here and there and it doesn’t do anything for us — until we see it in a different colorway and then we have to make it RIGHT AWAY? 🙂
Oh my this is so striking with the brights and black! I like the setting you came up with.
I really like the layout you ended up with. Very pretty quilt!
Bright and beautiful quilt!
Thank you for linking up your lovely quilt 😉
Oh wow! This looks terrific. How your colours sing with the black. I am also impressed with idea to top in a long weekend – that’s the way to do it!
so cute and so many ways to layout. Love it!
I’m SEW glad you listened to Marc (and, in your defense, I would normally choose random scrappy, too!!)
Oh my goodness! I absolutely love your rainbowy layout of this quilt. It looks stunning and I look forward to seeing how you decide to quilt it.
What a beautiful quilt! I can see why this design caught your eye. Your layout is great, and the colors really stand out!
Well done. I love it too. ;^)
That is a gorgeous quilt! Definitely a “drop everything and make it” project!
I really like this quilt. I
Your quilt is stunning! I love the bright colors against the charcoal.
LOVE the rainbow layout and the dark background. Wonderful! Are you going to redo the twisted blue and purple square or leave it in for fun?
Wow this is so lovely! The layout of colors really makes this special. Can’t wait to see how you quilt it. Thanks for sharing on Wednesday Wait Loss.
It looks great! Thanks for sharing with Oh Scrap!
I don’t know if I’ve ever used a dark background before, but that’s what makes this such a stunner! And the layout is perfect — well done!
This is stunning, I like this version so much better than random placement.
Oh ya!! that is a spectacular layout!!
Envious of all the bright quilts everyone is making and sharing right now, I guess it really is spring. I love the planned layout over the scrappy random, it really brings out the beauty of the quilt. Thank you for linking up to Put your foot down.