Diamonds Coverlet

As promised, I finally have pictures of my hand pieced diamonds. I'm hand piecing the diamonds for a coverlet for our daughter that we are expecting in May. I started the top in February. I was inspired by a coverlet made by Jane Austin, her mother, and her sister that is featured in Linda Franz's book Quilted Diamonds 2. I used the templates in the book for 26 of the diamonds and then filled in the rest with filler diamonds. I've finished piecing the 26 diamonds and am working on assembling the top. It is all hand pieced. I've gotten most of the rows assembled except two. I ran out of sashing fabric and am waiting for more to come. I was short 7 four inch strips. This was the classic case of running out of fabric and going back to the quilt store only to discover they no longer have it. I was lucky enough to find a half yard on ebay. I plan to add a border of 2 inch diamonds all the way around. The final quilt will be about 54 inches by 56 inches. I finished cutting the small diamonds and am looking forward to piecing them. I'm hoping the border will go quickly. I want to have the top finished by the end of this month. Here are a few detail pictures of the blocks.

While at the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival I saw a quilt with Minkee fabric as a backing. Minkee is a new fabric out by Benartex that is very soft and feels like velveteen or plush fabric. I liked the softness and am thinking about using it as the backing for the diamond quilt. I had heard that the fabric was very stretchy and wanted to test it on another project first to see how it would hold up. Especially since I'm planning on not quilting the quilt. (So it really will be a coverlet.) I'm afraid some of the seam allowances would be too close to allow easy quilting and it would take too long. I decided to throw a quick and easy top together to test with the Minkee fabric as a back. I raided my stash and decided to use the Noah's Ark prints I had collected before M- was born. I assembled 10 inch four patches and a couple of log cabin blocks to form a 50 inch by 50 inch top and then sewed it to the Minkee fabric, flipped it and sewed a quarter inch from the edge to keep the edge stable. I didn't want to mess with binding because that would have taken longer. I managed to get the Noah's ark coverlet done in less than 8 hours. (All machine work.) M- is modeling it for you.

It will be his. He'll test the durability of it for me so that I can decide if I want to do the same with the diamond top. I've also included a detail picture of the Minkee fabric on the back. It is a nice royal blue.
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I haven't added a label yet but hope to get to that after A- is born.

Well off to hand piece the border. Happy quilting yourselves.

Comments

[Joanne]

Love the Diamonds--are these from Linda Franz's first or second book?I have about 8 of them done from book 1, but haven't touched them in years. Trying to finish a Dear Jane first. Drop by my blog and say hi if you have a moment!

[Quilt Mommy]

Thanks Joanne! Yes, these are all from her second book. I never bought the first book. I liked the fact she included all the patterns on CD and included a DVD to teach the hand piecing technique she uses.

[lezley]

Love all your quilts!!! I'm a "retired" programmer too - been quilting thru it all.I'm now involved with getting quilts to our wounded soldiers.Do you know of any quilt groups in your neck of the woods who have been, are or might be interested in making quilts for our wounded??If so, please get ahold of me - there are several projects going on in Canada and I'd like to see them coordinated in that we are not all making a quilt for the same soldier! I would also like to be able to set up a "contact" in each of the provinces or regions across this great country - not a formal quilt registry - but a loose link of quilters so we can tie our threads together!!If you can, please get back to me:lezleyzwaal@automatedquill.com or qov@automatedquill.com (quill like the feather - not quilt).