Windham Wednesdays with Diamonds

I blogged about the Addison Collection 10 years ago and revisited the techniques a few days ago when I presented a quilt lecture to a local guild last week. I presented my Modern My Way: Vintage Roots, Today's Colors and showed some vintage quilts and techniques and then my quick take on simplified versions. First, the fabrics (which are long gone from my stash!)

Aren't these beautiful?

I asked a quilting friend and fellow teacher to cut some 60 degree diamonds using her AccuQuilt cutter from these fabrics.She took home my box of these fabrics and used the 60 degree template/die and cut a huge stack of beautiful diamonds. They measure 3-1/2" from flat side to flat side (both ways).

Accurate, beautiful 60 degree diamonds cut with the Go Cutter

And she also gave me the leftovers. (You'll see what I did with the leftovers toward the end of this post.)

Two diamonds cut per rectangle with extra fabrics for half-diamonds

Now, what am I going to do with them? Am I really up to setting in those y-seams? It's time for me to grow up and do the hard stuff. Yes, I am up to the challenge.

A basic Baby Blocks block

And the y-seam from the back:

Notice how the seams are pressed and the center "twirled" to stay flat on the front

I started to make some Texas Stars, but I was now getting pretty nervous! Can you see my dilemma?

Texas Star Block forms a larger hexagon shape

I decided to split those outside brown print diamonds (and had to cut new patches), and so I got my first Baby Blocks quilt since 1997 when I first published it in Quilt Magazine. Here is Connie's Runner which tested out my theory. I called it Connie's Runner because I gave it to my friend named Connie (pretty clever, huh?) No y-seams!

Connie's Runner, part of my Baby Blocks pattern

I still had a lot of diamonds left over. I revisited my Seven Sisters pattern (which uses 7 of those Texas Stars blocks shown above). This was a workshop for a few years and I even had students who specifically took the class because THEY had 7 sisters! Their plan was to make 7 of these, one for each sister.

Seven Sisters Table Topper: 37" x 42"

And I STILL had leftovers! I trimmed up the extra fabric from cutting the diamonds and put them together into spinning stars. Now my leftovers are gone - whew! Blocks are 8" x 9". I made these in 2016. Some of the star spin left, some to the right. Some are single color and some are combos.

Spinning Stars in My Hexagons

I was able to get 15 blocks, but how do you set 15 blocks? Let me show you! Six horizontal rows in a 2-3-2-3-2-3 assembly. I had a VERY narrow and tall quilt, so I added triple sashing to the sides ONLY. Who says it has to go all the way around?

Spinning Stars: 50" x 60"

This is an extra in my some of my classes and my students love to see how they can use the little cuttings from other blocks. Fun, huh? And NOW all the Addison fabrics are gone.