A couple of folks have posted me that they were having some problems with the diamonds for this quilt. These diamonds are simply an assembly of half-square triangles (HST's). However, you do have to make some practice blocks and make sure you know how to control your seam allowances. If you don't, you can find yourself with diamonds that have a gap between their points and the seam, or that have their points cut off.
One thing to bear in mind is that while you can make HST's oversize and trim them down, once they are sewn together, you can't do that... you'll cut off what should have been your seam allowance.
Here is a step by step of making a diamond and joining it to a row.
OK... I didn't show the making of these HST's. That's covered in TOBE Blocks here in The Quilt Shop. I did make them oversize and trim them down. Note that at this stage, their points come to the edge. The next step will be to sew them together into what you could think of as two flying geese blocks...
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Here you have the first joining. These two pieces have been laid together in a diamond, but if you turned the bottom one the other way, you'd have flying geese... Important... note that at this stage, the points at the top and bottom no longer come to the edge. You have 1/4" (hopefully) gap between the point and the edge. That gap will be your seam allowance when you join the block into the quilt. This is also why you must work with some accuracy at this point and cannot trim down... you'll trim your seam allowance off and end up with the points of your diamond "cut off" by the seaming.
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When you iron the seams down at this stage, preparing to sew the two "geese" together, make sure you "butt join" the seam edges so that one points east and one points west. This will make the sewing neater and easier on your machine.
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Here you can see me aligning the seams before sewing... |
And here you have a diamond! Note that all four points now end just 1/4" short of the edge, leaving you the seam allowance you need to build the quilt.
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Here you see the diamond set beside a piece of what would be the rest of the row the diamond will be in. I'm going to flip the plain block over and join them. |
OK... lesson time. I told you to make practice runs. You should know your sewing machine and how to control your seams on it. In this case, I was in a hurry, had recently moved a new machine I had never sewn on into position... even had to stop and put a belt on it... and didn't know my seaming all that well. You can see that I came out just a hair shy... there's a slight gap between my point and the seam. Ordinarily, that gap is so small I would probably ignore it, but it made an opportunity for a lesson, so I decided not to...
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What I have done as a way to correct a shy seam is to resew it ever so slightly inside of the old seam. You can see the old seam (the sloppy dar one) and the new one (the nicer white one). Obviously, I was pretty sloppy with that first one. Still getting used to the New Home/Free machine that runs in the opposite direction from a Singer. |
However, voila! A perfect diamond point to seam joining.
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I hope this series helps some of you with the making of the diamonds. They aren't really hard, but you do have to be a little more precise than when you make TOBE blocks oversize and can trim them down.
Captain Dick