Part of the gig for my free Craftsy class was providing two free patterns as part of the course materials (to get it, sign up for the class–it’s free–and they’re in the course materials available to download). The one I was so excited to make is behind me in the class ad (you can see that to the right —–> over there).
I based this off block off a “Victory” quilt I found in Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Quilt Patterns, which is now out of print but which is part of my local public library’s collection (and also available as part of EQ’s BlockBase series! Blockbase Pieced Quilt Patterns By the Electric Quilt Co. I got that for Christmas from my in-laws, which was awesome). The steeply angled “V” shape was really appealing to me, and so after a bit of playing around, I was able to make two Vs that, when inverted, had an interior diamond that matched up on points. With such narrow angles, it was much easier to paper piece.
Just the top before quilting, but you can really see those diamonds!
In progress. As for the quilting, this is when I was “breaking the rules”, and doing lots of work with overlapped lines to make texture. I’ll talk about the filled in pebbles and pebbles of different sizes below.
I used the “Tule” line designed by Leah Duncan from Art Gallery Fabrics. I love her collections with a somewhat unholy passion. And that solid gold color, Empire Yellow… well, it’s awesome and my pictures don’t do it justice.
I wanted a scrappy look, but also wanted those interesting overlapping diamonds to pop out, so I used solids for those. Each diamond has a different fill technique, just as each row does, too. If I were doing this quilt for me, I would probably go with more matching threads, to give a subtle background texture, probably mixed in with a few of the gold threads to add interest. I’d also probably not quilt the Vs so heavily. For the purposes of the class, though, everything needed to be quilted AND visibly! So, not my usual comfortable thread choices.
OK, so those pebbles and overlapping lines: I started doing these when I got frustrated one day and just wanted to not quilt like everyone else, do my own thing, and see what happened. I wanted texture of a different sort, and lots of it. I wanted to cross whatever lines I darn well wanted to! Well, that, and I was inspired by the lines on the palm of my hand, and also by the pipes on the truck in front of me one day (and yes, we were stopped at a light):
What an interesting texture, I thought.
Lights and darks, patterned and bundled, all sorts of interesting things to think about. What would my pebbles look like if I tried doing that on a quilt? What about doing rows of pebbles that had a space in between them, like the bottom left? What would that look like? What about doing bundles of filled pebbles versus regular, empty pebbles? Regular patterns versus irregular? You can see that above on the quilt, and on some of the practice sandwich at the top right (and my cheap G.I. Joe fabric! for a buck, I will practice on whatever!):
In any case, if you make that diamond quilt from my class, please share a picture of it over on the Craftsy classroom! or here on my flickr page. I’d love to see how other people interpret it. I also hope that maybe you’re inspired to try some new things, outside of the “normal” quilting, and outside of your comfort zone. You can do it!
thanks for the heads up on feedly — and btw, love your textural inspiration.
Thanks, Rose! Trying to be “awake” in the every day, you know? Practice through presence.