Blue Diamonds

 This is a picture of Blue Diamonds.  I have been collecting blue japanese fabrics, indigo fabrics, wax batik fabrics with gradations of blue for a while.  I wanted to highlight these beautiful fabrics in a pattern that will show some movement.  The light diamonds were placed on the left diagonal and the dark diamonds on the right diagonal.  These 2 light and 2 dark pieces were pieced together first.  I then cut diamond shapes out of 5 gradation hand dyed fabrics to be placed from the left, right, top and bottom of each light and dark 4 patch.

 The border fabric is a dark blue indigo fabric that I found at Stone Mountain Daughters fabric store.  It was in a plastic bag with a note to keep it stored in the plastic bag.  Such a beautiful blue.  Even though I washed it, I have the feeling the indigo will still bleed.  After taking John Marshalls workshop this past weekend, I am tempted to soak the whole quilt in soy milk.  Hmmm.

This is a closeup of the border quilting that I did.  I used an Aurifil 12 weight blue.  The stencil was cut out of freezer paper.  I traced the pattern on the freezer paper and using my biggest needle, punched holes using the sewing machine.  Then I pounced white chalk on the blue indigo and was able to sew this repeating pattern all around the border.  I used a 90/14 needle. One of my quilting friends said she thought it was hand quilted.  No.  But what a compliment.  The rest of the quilting was done by stitching in a ditch.

There is a lot of movement in this pattern.  Just what I wanted.

This quilt has been given to my Colleen Sato.