A Garden of Diamonds

 Created for Project Quilting 13.4 Mining for Diamonds challenge.

When this challenge came out, I thought, "Trish has been in my brain." I'd been seeing a diamond quilt in my head for days. Of course, the quilt in my head was bed size and this one needs to fit in the arrangement I’m making for the end of my hall and one week of time. So, maybe a diamond background with something on top to make it worthy of my wall.

I started making background diamonds while working it out I my mind. Flowers lodged in my brain and refused to leave. Not “In Silhouette”. I’ve already done that twice. 3D Flowers are one of my things. Haven’t done any in a while and they’ll look great in my hall. But they cannot go on a background of brightly colored diamonds. 

New plan. Diamond flowers. I started with strips of fabric cut with a wavy rotary cutter blade. I ran them through the ruffler attachment on my sewing machine to gather them, and sewed them in layers around diamond shaped bases. Add some beads for flower centers. Pretty fun.  

By now, I’m running out of time, so the background is one piece of fabric quilted in diagonal lines to create a diamond effect. Stems were made of assorted green fibers twisted together. I fused green fabrics together and cut them into diamond shapes for leaves. Finished the binding just as time ran out on my Friday. 

We were on the road at 8am this (Saturday) morning and I got some pictures just before we left.  Our 10 year old granddaughter, Pip, did us proud today in her biggest basketball tournament of the year and I’m so glad we were there. We should be home by about 9 pm and I’ll add in the links and pictures and get this posted. (I’m working on my iPad and need my laptop to do that tricky stuff and, of course, it picked this week to refuse to work unless plugged in.) Tomorrow it’s back to the tournament. Life is good. I’ll get to that other diamond quilt one of these days.

Created by Diane Lapacek in rural Poynette, Wisconsin.

14" x 33"

Diane's Flower Garden

Created for Project Quilting Quarantine 2020 Q.1 Big Challenge

I saw this challenge Sunday, and had no idea what to do.  Then I got out of bed on Monday morning to see sunshine! Spring! Hope! Gardening!

My first thought was one giant 3D flower. I started going through my saved ideas, but nothing felt right. I needed a full flower garden.  I've been making 3D flowers for awhile and had some (well, actually, lots) already made because when I start making them I can't stop. And when I want them for a project, I'm never sure how many or which ones until I'm sewing them on. Now, that means I didn't make them all this week. You may think that's cheating, but I look at these as embellishments ready to be sewn on. I did find I had no zinnias and I really wanted some, so I made up a few.

So, first a background. I started digging for one piece of fabric and soon realized that wouldn't work for me. You see, my name is Diane and I'm addicted to scraps. My quilting philosophy is, "Why would anyone use 5 fabrics when 50 will do?" So I made a scrappy background fabric. 

I decided I needed a fence. Here I went with just one fabric, because this is a one week challenge and I'm not totally crazy. And I have alot of hand dyed gray that had a previous life as table runners at my daughter's wedding. Perfect!

I sandwiched it all together and quilted wood grain into the fence and leaves and flowers into the sky.

I sewed on the flowers and added stems made by twisting assorted fibers together.  Now, some leaves. I liked the idea of home decorating fabrics, but it created a bit of a dilemma because I wanted them to have some dimension, but didn't have alot more time. Part of each fabric had heavy paper on the back. This would prevent fraying if I left it in place, but I didn't want white showing on the backs. So I got out my paints and painted the backs green, cut out leaf shapes and sewed them down creating the veins at the same time. This left the edges loose, so they had the dimension I was looking for.

Now, how does this qualify for the BIG challenge. Absolutely it is the most challenging thing I have worked on all year. All of my PQ projects have been quick and easy. And it put a BIG smile on my face during this time of social distancing. That's the most important thing.  Thank you, Kim and Trish and PQQ.

Created by Diane Lapacek while social distancing in rural Poynette, WI.
24" square.