Thursday, April 19, 2012

How I Made The Ruby Quilt - Diamonds & Triangles

 Today we'll talk about the diamonds.  Once again I printed them out via Incompetech.  Sized to fit the hexagons makes the long side 2.75" and the width 2 3/8".  The diamonds are pretty easy to rotary cut from strips. 
*I forgot to mention this about the Hexes: Starch is your friend!  Two sides will be on grain - the other two will be on the bias.  You really don't want these to stretch!  Use your favorite method, but starch is important!
 Once again you need to mark where the seams meet.  Later I went back and drew in the actual seam lines so it was easier to follow as I hand pieced.
 100 or so diamonds ready to go.
 Piecing them into the hexes.  You have to start and stop at the marked points, so there is room to maneuver the set-in seams.  I used a simple running stitch to piece.  By the end of piecing I had some pretty tiny stitches!

The triangles is where my instructions bog down a bit.  I could not for the life of me get the measurements right.  So I opted for a larger triangle so I could cut it down later.  So it is a 60 degree triangle, 3" on a side.  You can see how they are a bit longer than the hexes.

So once all the pieces were pieced.  I had a top!  Waiting for borders.  It took about two weeks of hand piecing.  Lots of movies, violin lessons, and ballet lessons.
 Tomorrow: Quilting the quilt.

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