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.

Tactical error and a new rule

The new rule is "never buy anything smaller than a fat quarter!"

I'm liking this, because it provides a built-in reason to buy more (i.e., FQs) rather than less (charms, layer cakes, jelly rolls) fabric. But there's a very practical reason behind it.

The tactical error I made was to purchase several "jelly roll" selections of Kaffe Fassett prints, because I wanted to broaden the range of fabrics to include in a future project, but a little bit of most would be plenty. I'm going to finally follow through on my goal to learn foundation piecing this year, and figured the 2.5" strips would be a perfect size for the pattern(s) I have in mind.

So far, so good, but it was not until I received the "your order has shipped" emails that I realized my error: I'm a dedicated pre-washer, and if I were going to mix the new bits in with existing fabric stash (which is a given), I'd have to pre-wash the jelly rolls, too. I love love love KF fabric, but dang, the stuff does shrink. Mixing unwashed with prewashed KF does not strike me as a good idea. Especially because I will be using a lot of his very intense colorways in deep reds and blues and purples.

I have to say I was tempted to ignore the strident yelps of reason from the logical side of my brain, but in the end I gave in. The pic above shows what about half a jelly roll looks like when it comes out of the wash. I did put it in a net bag, and grabbed it out of the dryer while still quite damp (ironing with a hot but no-steam iron dried it out fine), but still... what a mess.

The strips sure are gorgeous, though, and worth the hassle (although I don't plan to go through it again, it's FQs or bigger for me from now on). They aren't quite the pre-cut 2.5" width any more, but I'm not planning to use any of them for the kind of pattern other folks use jelly rolls for, so not an issue for me.

Here's today's pick of three I wish I had larger pieces of. There are many others, but today I especially like these. The red "big blooms" to the right I do have a large piece of. It's one of several reds that will feature prominently in a very ambitious (for me) project I have planned. More on that later.