New Quilt I am working on

I had the fun of working on a new quilt for the past two weeks, -- thus my relative quietness on my blog -- and got the top completed.  It is now at the quilters have magic worked on it.  I will post a pic of the quilting when it comes back from Brenda, the incredible quilter who works magic on my quilts!

Here is what it looked like before I started.  I cut 3" diamonds and stacked them up in the order I would need to use them.  I think that took longer than the sewing!!

Here is my design wall with the first few rows completed and lined up.  This was actually really fun to make as long as I followed my color chart!!

This was my color chart. . . only blown up really big so I could see what the heck I was doing!  LOL  Let me tell you that I kept this baby close the whole time, as I had to refer to it over and over!  I made relativelyl few mistakes, but got myself good and confused a few times when I put the right strips in the wrong order!!  LOL

I worked in rows that ran from upper right to lower left.  Once I completed a row I put it up on my design wall to make sure that I had my colors in the right places.  I added the black border diamonds after I was sure the color placement was right.

The trick to  putting the diamonds together easily was trimming the points.  You can see how I trimmed them in the first picture.  I use Marti Michell's 60 Degree Ruler to do the trimming.  I just love her Hexagon H set of templates for doing diamonds also.  Any of the templates can work to trim diamonds (thanks to you Barb Eikmeier for the great lessons!!!).  I used the H52 template a lot of the time because it was small and easy to keep near my cutting table.  And I used one of spinning cuttin mats so I could stack up diamonds and cut the tops and spin them to cut off the bottom points without disturbing my pile.  (Another trick Barb taught me!!  Thanks Barb, you totally rock)

 I got most of the strips made and up on my design wall last weekend thanks to two snowdays off work and a weekend sewin with the girls in my small group.  They gave me lots of encouragement to get it done!

Once I completed the top I added the color triangles to the top and bottom along with a black border strip.  The sides will remain zig-zagged (you can sorta see that in the left side of the picture.)

I hope these pictures got you tempted!!  The pattern will appear in the August issue of Quilter's World!

I can't wait to see what magic Brenda is working on this. . . oh boy I love the excitement of a new pattern!

                 And this whole quilt came from my stash!!!

And the next block of the month will be posted Feb 1 and the winner of the January BOM giveaway will be announced.  There are some great entries in the JewelsBOM Flicker Group so be sure to go and take a look.