Diamond Star Quilt - English Paper Pieced

 
scrap quilt diamond English paper pieced blocks appliquéd onto a black background
 

Guess who finished a quilt?

 
scrap quilt diamond English paper pieced blocks appliquéd onto a black background
 

Love the text print border!

 This one was a long time in the making. Well, not a long time to make, but a long time to finish. The piecing went together pretty quickly considering the blocks were English paper pieced.

I started it June 2012 while I was pregnant with my now 5 year old. I cut my own card stock templates with a rotary cutter and ruler and just started hand piecing. My first star was all one color, but then I switched to bi-colored stars. Much better!

scrap quilt diamond English paper pieced blocks appliquéd onto a black background

I made the blocks up pretty quickly. I tried to stick with a loose polka dot theme for the bright fabrics. 

scrap quilt diamond English paper pieced blocks appliquéd onto a black background

Then I hemmed and hawed over what color to put between them. I initially wanted to use a bright aqua floral, but decided that it was a bit too crazy. So I chose a tone on tone black.

scrap quilt diamond English paper pieced blocks appliquéd onto a black background

One of my 2013 goals was to finish it.  I didn't quite make it. (understatement)

scrap quilt diamond English paper pieced blocks appliquéd onto a black background

From that point on it keeps popping up on my blog, usually in Work in Progress or Finish Along Goal posts. This is a picture from May 2014 when it showed up as a FAL goal. I was in the process of appliquéing the borders on (if you look carefully, you can see the pins).

I mentioned in that post that it had been sitting for awhile, and it was going to sit a lot longer. I finished appliquéing on the borders in 2015 but I didn't get it basted until Spring 2017. Then it sat around for six months while I debated how to quilt it. I wanted to do something super fancy, perfect, and quilt show worthy, but in the end I opted for just getting it done.

scrap quilt diamond English paper pieced blocks appliquéd onto a black background

You can see the quilting better on the back. The diamond area is criss crossed with straight line quilting and the borders are covered in swirls. I am planning on adding some bright chunky hand quilting around the blocks, but for now it is finished!

5 1/2 years later. :)

scrap quilt diamond English paper pieced blocks appliquéd onto a black background

I have been thinking about why I put quilts away and don't work on them and it always has something to do with hitting some sort of snag. Blocks don't fit right, or I can't figure out how to quilt it, or I don't want to baste or bind it. I really don't like basting and binding....

I think I just need to plow on through. The problems usually aren't as big of a deal as I think they are and when I push through, I get a pretty quilt!

And I get to pass something off my Q4 FAL Goals!

Quilt Stats

Started: June 2012

Finished: December 2017

Size: 58" x 76"

Techniques: English paper piecing and applique (100% hand pieced!)

Machine quilted and bound