Star Light, Diamond Bright Quilt

Last time you saw this quilt (here on this blog) was in January when I finished the top.

I had been following a longarm quilter on Instagram and was impressed with his work. (You can check him out at @quiltingbydavid.) He lives and works in St. Joseph, Missouri, and it turns out we were going to Missouri in February.

It was about a two-hour detour, but I thought it was worth it to drop off my quilt instead of mailing it. We got to meet David and take a tour of his workspace at his home. He had just gotten a second longarm machine in November and was able to keep both of them busy.

I had already picked a pattern from his website (quiltingbydavid.com) and before the day was done, he had texted that it was done and asking if he should wait to mail it so that it wouldn't get to our house before we did! And his prices can't be beat either. :)

It was really fun to see my quilt come up in his IG feed.

The only mishap was that I didn't realize he would trim the quilt. He did and that meant I couldn't do the extra wide binding that I was planning to do. He didn't do anything wrong and I'm sure most people are thrilled to have it done for them, but it was a lesson for me to explicitly mention it next time I have plans for any special handling of the edge.

I chose an all-over interlocking diamond pattern. David did a great job of lining up the stitched diamonds with the diamond pattern of the fabric. They're not the same angle, but he lined them up along the whole length and width of the quilt. I had noticed in his IG feed that there were never issues of patterns wandering off on a funny angle or not being lined up with the quilt pieces, and that's why I trusted him to do this quilt for me.

I let him choose the thread colour because I couldn't decide on one and thought, given all of his experience, he would know what would work (and what he had in stock). I did know I wanted a solid and not a variegated. He went with a nice lilac which I think worked great.

This was the first time I "quilted by check" (as opposed to "by hand" or "by machine") and I would definitely send more quilts to David if I want an all-over design.

When I found this purple batik with orange circles, I thought it would be perfect for this quilt. The plan was to make it quite a bit wider so that it wouldn't get so lost in the busy-ness of the quilt and could actually frame the diamonds. But it looks fine and certainly is perfectly functional.

For the back, I pieced together some fabric I had on hand. The larger pieces were used for diamonds on the front. And then I added a vertical strip of diamonds that were leftover from the front.

I added a new blue batik fabric on the sides to fill in around the diamond points.

Here is the finished quilt:

The final size is about 62" x 84", a good sized single (twin) with a little extra length.

The final step was to make a label. I ironed some freezer paper to the back of a white cotton and wrote on it with fabric markers. (The freezer paper stabilizes the fabric so you can write on it. You peel it off once it's done.)

Of course I did it in the shape of a diamond and bordered it like the rest of the blocks.

I was able to deliver the quilt in May when I was home for a wedding. It didn't work out to give the quilt directly to the recipient though, so I left it with her parents. Long story short, they had to wait a couple days to give it to her, but finally her mother couldn't wait any longer. (They guessed what was in the box, but hadn't seen it yet.)

So even though she came home from school tired out from field day and looking for a shower, her mother said she had to do it right then. :)

I'd say she appears pleased. :)