Kaffe Fasset Diamonds in progress

This is what 's been up on my design wall the past few weeks. It's a modification of a pattern from the new Kaffe Fassett book, and will be "side B" of the Pink Lattice lap quilt. Here I've stitched the framing strips around each diamond, but the blocks are not sewn together yet. Colors are a bit darker than shown.

I scaled the pattern down to better fit the lap quilt dimensions, which, with a 4-5" border all round, will end up at about 48x72. My diamonds are 6"x12". Most are fussy cut to highlight favorite floral bits of various fabrics (all but one are KF or KF Collective). My frame strips are were cut at 1.25" (.75" finished width) because I had some KFC "jelly roll" strips to use, and by splitting each 2.5" strip lengthwise I had enough to use each print twice.

I matched centers to frames as I cut, making sure that no combination was repeated. Not the best approach, but this is a 100% stash project. I had very limited quantities of some fabrics, which resulted in cutting more diamonds than ideal from the prints I had more of. I knew from the get-go that following Kaffe's alternating light-dark plan was not going to be possible, but I figured the fabrics are all so gorgeous that whatever I managed to pull off would still look pretty good.

My original plan was to alternate rows of (mostly) "red" and "blue" diamonds, but when I laid them out that way the frames did not play together well. So I gave up and just fiddled (and fiddled, and fiddled some more) over four or five days, taking another peek each time I walked past the sewing room, until I felt it was as good as it was going to ever be. The biggest challenge was keeping the several bold chevron stripe frames from ending up next to each other, cause as soon as they ganged up they stole the show.

The side and end half-diamonds are from complete ones sliced in half... which means each is short the seam allowance along the cut side, and I'm having to stretch those blocks to fit as I do the assembly. So far that hasn't caused any horrific problems, and since the frames are from jelly roll strips they are cut across the fabric width and are quite stretchy. Again, not the best approach: the result of combining stash limitations with a slapdash attitude to this particular project.

Ah well, I've never claimed to be a perfectionist, and this quilt's for me, me, me, and I'll love it anyway. I've been stitching the blocks together a few at a time since last week, and have only a few long seams to go. This one, like the "NTG" quilt I'm making for Mr. de Hilo, is going to be put away until I get the extension table thingie for my machine so I can machine-quilt them.