Saturday, 25 January 2025

vintage diamonds in scrappy brights





Like many, I enjoy making a quilt "look" like a scrappy quilt, and this latest WiP is the perfect example. I used one 10" layer cake Firefly by Sarah Watts RRS as my starting point, and then I'm adding contrasting & blending bits & bobs from my stash into the mix to add more variety & interest. 

I sourced the 'vintage diamonds' quilt pattern @theowlhutch, pattern link and quilt inspiration from Jolene @ blueelephantstitches (if you haven't stopped by her blog yet, it's so well worth a visit). My focus is to try and capture some of her ‘vintage vibe’ and yet still be reflective of my stash here.

I must admit, it's been a while since I cut 60° diamonds, so I faffed around a bit, checking out different rulers ... Mr D was quick to chip in here & commented "how can you make all these quilts and NOT remember how to make a 60° diamond?"  We-l-l-l- loved that feedback! I'm just putting it down to a wee senior moment😕 


Anyways, I quickly found my rhythm, 
here's a few progress pics ...









ta da! almost half a quilt ...



And a couple of excellent tips I learnt from Rachel @stitchedincolor - first up, to making a scrappy quilt like this fun, yet not visually overwhelming, is to create long strings of same (or nearly same) diamonds/flying geese/or whatever. She also suggests adding a couple high-contrast units too, such as the black with raspberry, which also cleverly helps emphasise the vertical directionality.

I will need to lay all my pieces out on the design wall first as the rows are joined together diagonally ...
I may be sometime ... but I'm loving how things are looking so far for my scrappy quilt #2. 

Linda



5 comments:

MissPat said...

An interesting design, but all those bias edges make me shutter. Looking forward to seeing the final layout.
Pat

Janie said...

There's some scrappy brights happening here, lovely. And it's good to stretch the memory and get up and running again!

Karen S said...

These diamonds are stunning. I think your memory is working perfectly.

Jocelyn is Canadian Needle Nana said...

Oh my, wow, these are so beautiful, Linda. Going to be stunning. I too enjoy Rachel's site and love how she works so much with scraps. Happy Stitching from me!

Rebecca Grace said...

This will be gorgeous, Linda! I love that you are sharing who is inspiring you lately and I will definitely check both those blogs out. And yes -- "fake scrappy" is my favorite. As a new quilter I would look at vintage quilts or at contemporary scrappy quilts combining many different prints and think you just need to grab a bunch of whatever, cut it up and sew it all together and it will just work like magic. I made a few really ugly quilts that way!! Now I realize that the quilters a hundred years ago, before modern quilt shops, had an advantage in that there was far less variety in the dyes, colors and prints available to them. It was basically as though everything available to them was from the same "civil war era collection" or "feed sack era collection" and even older scraps in their rag bags would work in the mix as the colors and styles didn't change as drastically or as rapidly as they do today. We have so many options today and that's great, but it does require careful thought and planning to combine prints from many sources and end up with a pleasing, cohesive look to the finished quilt like YOURS! I'm looking forward to seeing where this one takes you -- and tell Mr. D that I would need to drag out a reference book to refresh myself on 60 degree diamonds, too!