Swallows in the Window

I had some 45 degree diamonds left over from my Flying Swallows workshop. They reminded me of another swallows pattern that uses the same units: Swallows in the Window. Yes, a vintage block from the early 1900s and pieced using templates. I like to rotary cut my patches and that's what I did. 

Hint: I will show you my latest creation using these fabrics (Romance, by Windham) as you scroll down. As you will see, I took poetic liberty with the hummingbirds and call them swallows.

Romance Fabrics by Windham

This Hearts and Swallows quilt is from 2001. I had to do a bit of fabric manipulation to make those diamonds behave in the corners, but it worked! Those little triangle points along the pieced border are like prairie points!

Hearts and Swallows

This would not be hard to make today. Those 4 corner units are really half Lone Star blocks! Let's see the vintage Swallows in the Window block that I'm talking about. There are NO y-seams in my version.

Here is a digital version of where I took those extra 45 degree diamonds. The center square is dictated by the size of those corner diamonds. Trust me. That's the way math works! I love my multi-sized square rulers, don't you?!

Swallows in the Window

This Arrowhead Star was made using ultra suede scraps and a velveteen background square. Probably made in 1995 or so. I cheated by cutting out the diamonds, placing them carefully on the background square and machine stitched them in place using a gold rayon thread!

Arrowhead Star

Here is the current project I'm working on using those Fairy Frost diamonds and a beautiful fabric collection called Romance by Windham Fabrics (2018). Yes, it took me awhile to cut into the set of fat quarters that I showed at the top of this post! The diamonds and triangles are rotary cut.

Swallows in the Window: 19-1/2" finished (center of quilt shown below)

But, as you can see, I had to get creative with that center block. The 1/4 yard of the border print (18" x 22") was the EXACT size I needed for the top and bottom borders.

With added borders: 27-3/4" x 31-3/4" unfinished

Now the real challenge will be to keep adding borders using the fat quarters from the collection. I like these sorts of challenges.