{scraps from the cutting room floor}: July 2011

I'm not gonna lie to ya. The reason I finally finished this quilt is because I had THREE self imposed deadlines. One, I really wanted to work on the binding during our loooooooong car trip to Illinois and back, so I had to have it ready for binding by June 17th. Two, it was meant as a birthday gift for Brecken who was 1 year (holy cow, how did THAT happen?) on July 9th. Three, I wanted to show it off at the South Jordan Modern Quilt Guild meeting on July 19th. Done, done, and DONE! Yay! (Although, truth time again, I took the quilt on my trip with every intention of finishing it and then got distracted with family fun and ended up finishing it up the two nights before Brecken's birthday!)

My inspiration for this one came from Jess over at Urban Patchwork. She has an awesome tutorial posted that I referred to MANY times. I just took a few pics as I went. You can get the detailed instructions on her site. :)

Here is the stack that I started with. A lot of the fabrics are from Sanctuary by Patty Young. My fave at the bottom is Dahlia Lama in Seafoam. It was the print I wanted to showcase on the back of the quilt. I didn't end up using that alphabet print. I didn't want it to always be a "baby" quilt. Once I got going I added in some other prints with similar colors and the solids are Kona White, Kona Coal, and I think the turquoise was Kona Lagoon.

It took me forever to cut all the pieces. I basically fussy cut most of the diamonds instead of doing strips because I wanted all the prints with squares to be straight and not on an angle. Then I laid them all out on the living room carpet in the pattern I wanted and left it there on the floor for about a month, no kidding! After all that cutting I was a little afraid to start sewing because I didn't want to screw it up and unpick everything. Also, I'd heard that diamonds are hard to sew without stretching out of shape. And also, maybe I was being a tad lazy. ;)

Piecing, piecing, piecing. Trying so hard not to stretch the fabric!

Sometimes I had a helper. This is where the photos came in handy so I could see how I needed to put the pieces back together!

Hand sewing the binding. I really liked this tutorial and this one.

Finished!

The back is the Dahlia Lama print with a few other faves thrown in. And Paul was actually the one who decided that the purple polka dots needed to be on the back and I love it! This was my first time piecing a backing. It wasn't as bad as I thought! Maybe I can piece the back to my hexagon quilt finally!