Diamonds are Forever

Remember my genius idea for using up the leftover triangles from my table mat?  It’s finished and I really love it.   P.S. I hope its okay to call myself a genius, at least for this instance!

I used my walking foot to add some straight line quilting definition around the shapes.  Doesn’t it just scream “modern?”

After a prompting on instagram, my friend, Eliza, was kind enough to come up with a name for this mini quilt:  “Diamonds are Forever.”  Isn’t that just the perfect name?!  Thanks, Eliza!!

This one is going to my Mom, but since I liked it so much, I wanted to make one for myself.  So I pulled out my baggie of leftover triangles cut off from the gazillion flying geese units from my sister’s swoon quilt. I chain pieced these bad boys into one very very long string of HSTs.

Seriously…so many.

I got them all pressed and trimmed up, finishing 2.5″ unfinished, compared to the 4.5″ in my previous mini. Since it was significantly smaller, I added one extra ring around the diamond shape.  I didn’t even end up using all the HSTs!

Since I like experiments (duh, engineer), and don’t really like sewing the same thing twice, I decided to change-up the quilting.  I used a micro-stipple in between the diamonds rather than the walking foot lines.  It’s difficult to see in the picture, but the unquilted diamonds pop up against the dense quilting in the background areas.

I’m a bit disappointed that the seams seem to be showing up yellow through the front of the quilt.  I used Kona snow (a favorite of mine), and I’ve never seen that happen before. It was leftover from when I made the quilt a few months ago so it’s not that old. Thoughts??

I finished up the quilting and bound the mini using a thin 2″ double fold binding.  I tend to like the look of thinner bindings on minis.  I might try single-fold binding next time.

If you follow me on Instagram or on Facebook, you know I asked my followers which was their favorite:  The bigger quilt with straight line quilting or the smaller with the dense stipple.  There was a clear favorite!  You all overwhelmingly voted for the straight line quilted piece for its modern feel.  If you haven’t chimed in yet, let me know which is your favorite!