Diamonds Finally Finished

My top, started in 2013, is finally completed.....It still has some obvious errors in the joining but since it has all been sewn about three times, I'm going to follow the adage of "finished is better than perfect"  and live with it.  If I started it now, I'm sure my cutting would be more accurate and that that would make a difference.  This turned out to be 48 x 72 before I added a 2" strip to the width edges.  It looked as if thee binding would cut off some of the diamond points.pattern says 55 x 64. I have no idea what happened to the extra width!  I did use some leftover diamonds to add an extra row to the length,  You may notice that it is in two pieces...I'm planning on quilting it on one of my home machines and none of them have a very wide bed.  Hopefully, this will be a finish for the end of the month.  Backing fabric has been ordered.

sew, press, rip.....repeat

Way back in 2013, I had a 2.5" strip roll of batiks. While looking for a pattern that was a bit different from the usual jelly roll quilt, I ran across this at the Moda Bake Shop.  I liked the diamonds and  completely ignored the tag that this was an "ambitious" project.  At this time I had made several small projects and a Scrappy Trip quilt and had been sewing garments since childhood.  So, I started and had everything cut except the final finishing solid triangles and about one third of it assembled when I realized that I had problems.  It then went into a bag where it sat until this year when I unearthed it and decided that it needed to be finished.

Putting it together on my design floor, I realized that the problems weren't as severe as I had thought. I do have some strips sewn to the wrong sides of the triangles and several extra multicolored triangles.  The major problem is a section that seems to have a permanet pucker,,,probably from a stretched bias.  I think that I can recut those triangles and solve that problem.  Now, I am piecing the undone sections ...trying to get the triangle bases even has involved sewing them, unfolding to see that the the bases are uneven and then ripping and trying again.  Most everything is being sewn at least twice!

This is the section with the puckers...everything else needs a good pressing but I don't want to do that until assembling is completed for fear of stretching more bias! My goal is to have the whole thing pieced by the end of the weekend.