Diamond Rainbow

I had a very quiet Labor Day.  Sunday after church, my husband took the kids to my parents house.  They spent the night and it was very quiet around here for over 24 hours.  I should've cleaned, or prepared for our week in homeschool.  Instead, I made HSTs. There was laundry being washed and dried meanwhile, so as to not completely ignore my household duties. I made lots and lots of HSTs from the charms I received through the swap over at Ellison Lane Quilts.   On Monday, Penelope and I watched Voyager reruns and worked on the layout of my Diamond Rainbow quilt.  She might not look it, but she had strong opinions about where squares should- more specifically shouldn't- be placed.  At one point, I took note that she was no longer "helping" me, and I got worried that she'd crawled into the dryer with the last load (confession: I have anxiety issues).  Unable and unwilling to go check the dryer (I hadn't heard any thunking, but there was a comforter in there, surely that would muffle the sound),  I stood calling frantically for her.  She came- eventually- blinking her tired eyes from behind the couch and resigned to continue her role as creative director.

I have a plan for this project, and the specifics is in the thread and quilting.  I decided that I wanted to use an Auriful variegated thread in the quilting on black fabric in order to create a dramatic effect.  While I was making the HSTs, I really did doubt the use of black, especially when I put the orange and black squares together and immediately had visions of Halloween.  But, I forged ahead.  When I got the first squared laid out, my plan was reaffirmed.  I love it.

The block is pretty simple:

Those blue corner squares aren't the same, just very- very similar.

But I think it creates a really dramatic diamond effect:

Being the slacker quilt blogger that I am, it didn't occur to me to take photos until the sun was setting and I was post-it-noting my blocks to put them away. This is a side view of most of  the quilt. There are a total of 24 blocks in the top, although there are just 18 here.  Each of the 5 piles is a block + the completed block- 24 blocks.  As you can probably tell, the charms are randomly placed.  I took care to make sure none of the prints were repeated in any of the blocks, but that was it. In looking through my pictures this morning, I did notice that there was probably too many purple squares in one block, or in the case of the above block- fabrics too similar in the same block, but I do like the overall layout. I believe that there could probably be a great value quilt in there somewhere, or a more dramatic use of the color wheel, but my creativity had expired on this one.  I have four blocks reserved for a strip across the back.  I'm going to have to figure out how to make the front and back rows even so as to not mess up the quilting.  How do quilters do that? I'm thinking of tieing the squares together in order to guarantee they are even, and them quilting it.  I'm excited to get this one done.  I started it with a specific recipient in mind, but being a new quilter, I've never completed a quilt for myself.  This just might stay with me.

Funny story about quilting with kids.  I have these squares on a card table.  Each pile of squares is clipped with a binder quilt.  While putting my 18 month old down for a nap, my 3.5 year old took half a dozen of them apart and started matching the squares.  I got to her before she took all of them apart, but, *big heavy sigh.