Diamond in the Rough – a Project QUILTING project

This weeks Project QUILTING Challenge was birthstone. I was born in April so my birthstone is Diamond. Per the challenge we had to be inspired by the color … not the shape. But I couldn’t get the shape out of my mind and since it’s a classic quilt shape I figured I might as well go with it. I also realize that diamonds come in a lot of colors but it felt like I had to go with white and or iridescent for this project. Diamond in the Rough kept coming to me as I was contemplating this challenge and I had an idea!

I wanted to layer black fabrics with a piece of glittery vinyl between the two pieces. Then I was going to free motion quilt “coal” shapes (after research it turns out diamonds don’t come from coal but rather carbon so this should have been my first sign this idea wasn’t going to work). Once I had the “coal” shapes quilted I took my favorite sharp scissors – Karen Buckley’s Perfect Scissors (ad) – and cut the black fabric out around the quilted pieces.

You can sort of see the process in the photo above – layer, quilt, cut one side, cut the other side … pretty much like a reverse applique but with vinyl in the middle.

So – the “rough” part of my project was complete – now to make the diamond part.

I pulled out my Giucy Giuce and Alison Glass Mini Series quilt patterns and found the Diamond Sidestep pattern (ad). This would be perfect for what I was thinking of doing. I paper pieced four of them in “white” fabrics.

I decided to frame the paper pieced diamonds with Sky Ombre Prism fabric that I got from Blue Bar Quilts. I am OBSESSED with this fabric! It’s really neutral with pops of RAINBOWS throughout! It’s seriously beyond fabulous!!!

I layered my mini quilt and quilted it with actually glow in the dark (ad) thread. I haven’t looked at it in the dark to see if it works yet but it seemed like something cool to try. I just did simple straight line quilting to enhance the diamond shape. I then did a faced binding to finish this piece.

I had intentions of sewing the coal vinyl piece onto this so you could get hints of the diamonds behind it and then when you lifted it up the beautiful quilt would be under it. But a practice run showed me that my great idea wasn’t so great after all.

I made the coal pieces too big without enough space between the coal to show off enough peeks of the quilt.

Sometimes great ideas don’t turn out to be that great but I’m so glad that I learned some lessons in this 11″ project! I know I could have tried again with the coal idea and do it at a different scale but once I realized that diamonds aren’t made from coal it didn’t really seem worth the second effort.

So … after my “great” idea didn’t work – I decided to just go with the basic mini quilt that I made to go under the coal.

Here’s my quilt “Diamonds in the Rough” even though they’re not quite so hidden. Sometimes diamonds are just right in front of you!