A Lucky Dip of Diamonds

 

I am catching up (again) with some finished projects from the start of the year.

We had an absolutely gloriously sunny and hot summer here in the deep south of New Zealand (unlike our poor rained-out/cyclone-affected fellow Kiwis in the North Island) and so I struggled to find 'good' days to take quilt photos (if it is too sunny it washes out the colours and creates dark shadows).

Finally had a cloudy day last week, on which my handy hubby was also home at the same time as me and the clouds, so we rushed outside to get photos of this beauty so I could then gift it.

This has been laying over the spare sofa/couch for the past two months while waiting for its photo session and I got as much pleasure from seeing it every day as I did from when I was creating it!

In the summer holidays I sorted all my strip/string scraps into blues/greens, yellows/reds/oranges, pinks and purples, and neutrals/blacks/whites/greys.  Mainly because the bag was overflowing and I needed to tidy it up.

I have been wanting to attack that scrap pile for a while, so chose to do a stringy foundation block, inspired by Jessica Dayon's Instagram tutorial, and as shown in the example created by quilted moose.

I used 7" squares of a white tone on tone from my stash.  I put 2" marks from one corner to use as the starting points for placing the strips, then simply started sewing by reaching into the blue-green bag and sewing whatever strip was pulled out. My only 'rules' were to not have the same fabric on the same side more than once, and to mix up the widths of the strips.

I really enjoyed pulling out strips and remembering the projects that the fabric had originally been used for...some were well over ten years ago!

The finished quilt measures 52.5"square...and it only used up about half of the blue/green strips (blues/aquas are the colours I have probably used the most in the past decade).

As well as dealing to some scraps, and making use of a stash fabric, the quilt was also a great chance to then make use of my new Bernina Q20 longarm to do the quilting. 

I chose to do free-motion pebbles in the white areas, and I used a straight ruler for lines in the strips.

The main problem was my quilt frame is currently only 5 feet wide, and although the quilt itself fit on the frame, the sewing machine couldn't sew right to the edges as of course the base of the machine could only go as far as the sides of the frame.  

So I had to quilt to where I could, then take the quilt off and turn it sideways to do the rows on each side that the Q20 needle couldn't get to, but it all got done in the end.

The backing was also made from stash fabrics - a cute 'fox and friends' print.

I have gifted this lap quilt to an awesome friend, Nicole Elliott, who had admired a progress photo of it that I shared on Instagram/Facebook, and who I thought might like something to snuggle under if she has any 'blue' days in the months ahead as she deals with a health issue that has cropped up recently for her.

Sharing on Michelle's Beauties Pageant linky post - hi everyone!