Bordered Diamonds Plus! Finished

Plus, because of the addition of the flying geese... creative right? :)  I know, lame. LOL!  I started Bordered Diamonds in 2015 at a quilt retreat.  It was a fairly quick quilt top to finish, but I wanted to add more to it to make it larger.  It took another quilt retreat to get through the millions of flying geese I made, and now finally it's a finish.


Last night while watching Miracles From Heaven (*note below for a comment on this), I took the last stitch of the binding.  Even though this quilt is larger, the binding went a lot faster for me than the Field Day binding did.  I think I like multiple fabric bindings for that reason.  It changes things up and keeps it interesting.



  I used up all the pieces I could from the fabric collection for this quilt.  I know I could have saved large pieces and used them in other quilts, but the fact is... I have a lot of those large pieces I've saved from other projects that just linger in my stash.  Instead of using backing fabric that I had recently bought on sale for this, I decided that using up the fabric was more appropriate and would fit better.  I had (and still do) so many flying geese leftover, that incorporating that into the back was obvious.  Splitting up that last piece of pink Begonia fabric to use for the backing needed to be done.  I have searched twice now for more yardage of that fabric for this quilt, so that final 2+ yards left of it was going to get used up in this quilt.  It's an older fabric that takes some sleuthing to find.

Blowing up the backing photo you can kind of see that I practiced more feathers in the border.  I did some back and forth wiggles in the diamonds, and stitched along the outside of the diamonds.  I did a wavy pattern on the pink Begonia fabric between the center and the flying geese as well.  Because the fabrics are so busy, and all over pattern would have been just fine.  You can't really see any of the quilting.

Now I can get back to my Clara's Stars for night time stitching.



*Miracles From Heaven.  This was a great movie.  I hadn't realized that it was based on a true story until the end.  What I found most interesting was that my 9yo who typically doesn't sit and watch movies with me, chose to sit and watch this movie with me!  It must have struck him so much that this morning I came downstairs to find him watching it again (I rented it from Amazon).  This is what I meant about him being a thinker which I noted in a previous blog post. I don't know if the two are related (the movie subject and the death of his birthmother) or if it was just an interesting movie to him.  But to watch it a second time, to me, was really something.  He could have chosen to watch cartoons, or spongebob, or whatever!  Instead it was this movie.

Anyway... Have a great day.  I need to see if there may be another quilt top I can finish up to keep this roll going :)

Bordered Diamonds Border

So now the question becomes... do I want this to become a bedsized quilt or do I make it as is for a twin or comfort quilt?  I'd love for this to become a queen sized quilt, but that would mean adding 20" to the width (it's currently 62x84).  So that's the conundrum. I could very easily use more of the left over fabrics and make a piano key border, but I'm not sure that would work with this quilt.


Anyway... I went for a third option in regards to setting the flying geese.  This way works much better with the leftover 2" that I needed to work with.  I am left with two corners having just one flying geese block instead of the two, but it looks fine this way.  I would have had to do some funky figuring with the other options.  I now have 6 flying geese borders that I can use in another quilt (I made a lot of flying geese, and I still have a lot of single blocks leftover).  I could play around with those for additional borders.  We'll see.  I'll stare at the top for a day or so and see if anything strikes me--or if I decide to leave it as is and quilt it up.



On to irons:
After hoping it was just a fluke that my Rowenta with 400 steam holes and awesome steam blasts decided that it was meant to be a waterfall out the back and totally drench my ironing table and projects more times than I can count.... I did an iron survey of what others thought. I really wasn't wanting to go beyond $50 this time. I've never used a Shark before, so I am giving it a try. I wanted an iron that was at least 1700 watts, and the one I bought today is at 1800. I just got/bought it today, so this marks day 1. We'll see if the Shark (Ultimate Professional Iron GI505) outlives my Rowenta DW5197 that I ordered on August 16,2015 (yes, I am getting very specific on dates... Rowenta should be better than this!). I really like the form of Rowenta, but if function isn't working, than your product is junk. Form Follows Function. But knowing how companies make appliances today, they aren't built to last. They want people to buy again before 5yrs. This is very frustrating.



I will likely hold on to the Rowenta since it still heats up well, but if the Shark lives beyond a year, it'll be going bye-bye.

Field Day and Bordered Diamonds Updates

I finished up my Field Day quilt top, the pattern from the collection of Kaufman's Kona Color of the Year: Highlight.  I made it larger with borders and now I await backing fabric.  I could piece some together, but I opted to search out some wide backing instead.  I love the top!  For the color pop at the bottom, I used the Kona fabrics I won two years ago from the Row By Row.  It was perfect for this, and no using the same color twice.





Next, I am trying to figure out a border arrangement for the Bordered Diamonds top.  I am about 2" off, so I will need to do something intentional for the corners.  We'll see what I come up with.  I can't decide if I like the streak of lightning in the pink fabric, or using it along the edges.  I will likely make the other two sides (since the flying geese rows aren't sewn together yet) and then make the decision.  Right now I am sort of preferring the pink lightning down the center.




The binding will also be the pink fabric (if that makes a difference in which you prefer).

and then there's this....


I walked into the living room to grab my camera and found Gordon in one of his contortions. I'm surprised he hasn't totally tangled himself up :) His smile makes me laugh...

Bordered Diamonds Top

I need to face facts and possibly invest in better lighting for my quilt room.  If you look at the bottom/center of this quilt, just know that is the the best representation of the colors in the border and for the majority of the quilt.



I love this top so far, but I don't like the technical aspects of the directions.  Cutting ten leftover diamond sections to create the outside edges is kind of a joke because you lose your points when squaring up the top (especially for the corners when you are to cut one diamond into fourths).  I made the decision to square up using the points of my diamonds as a general area to cut. I may have lost their points, but at least there is conformity.  I'm guessing that Liza Prior Lucy has a method for sewing up Kaffe's ideas.

I had placement errors when sewing my rows together, but I decided not to rip out because of the stretching bias. Also, I discovered after I sewed my end pieces that the diamonds I chose to cut for the top/bottom (right now the quilt top is on its side)--3 were of the same center fabric. Sigh. At the time I was focusing on the border fabrics. I should have looked again the next day. Oh well.

I am considering making a round of simple blocks to make the top larger.  I do love the vibrant colors, but when people mentioned to me about being careful with the bias edges, that's no joke.  I think if I did it again I would starch the fabrics to a cardboard consistency :)

From Kaffe Fassett's book "Simple Shapes and Spectacular Quilts".