Step 1 finished

The first step of the Diamond nine patch color wash is finished. this is the background for an autumn leaves wall hanging. Right now it measures roughly 46 x 70. It will be trimmed because the setting triangles are oversize to make it easier to square it up in the end.

Here it is laying across my king size bed. It is now too big for the present design wall.

This is a close up of a section closer to the edge than to the center and  the color is more true than the other photos.
It is much warmer visually than the photo below which shows the half blocks on the sides.









 I am not sure how I will deal with some of the edge blocks that stretched  on the bias edges.  I made it much worse by stay stitching along the edge. Some of it will quilt  out but there are a couple of places that will have to be fixed or maybe the half blocks will need to be replaced.

Jack asked if it was going to have some color in the center. I got out a bunch of fabrics that are possibilities.

These are two views of some of the fabrics I am auditioning for the leaves. I will use fewer fabrics and multiple leaves of the same fabric.
I am aiming for a look of the wind sweeping along a pile of leaves.

I am thinking about how I am going to accomplish this and hoping for the best.

Diamond Challenge Start

I have fussed around long enough with EQ7 working out how I want to do the Diva Diamond Challenge. I bought neutral fabric for the background blocks at the Farnpark Quilt Show on vendors weekend and I have been doing nothing with it since then.

This is the fabric I bought to get started. It is arranged left to right from light to dark; the order of the right 4 fabrics is subject to change.   These colors are all pretty close to the true colors

This is the same 7 fabrics with 2 more darker fabrics added on the right. These are from my stash and I don't have enough of either of them but I added them just to think about what I am going to look for.

This is what I started on today and it is all I accomplished. There is really no yellow in either of these fabrics. I used the first 2 fabrics for these blocks; the true colors show best in the top color run photo. Each set of subsequent blocks will have the darker fabric from the previous blocks in the "4" position and the next (darker) fabric in the "5" position. Think of the blocks as 9 patch blocks with the 4 position as the inner patch on the outside rows and the 5 position as the center and corner patches. I need to do some math before I get started on the other blocks. Each subsequent set of blocks will increase by 4 blocks more than the previous set.

This is the background I have worked out in EQ7 using the fabrics I scanned into the program for this quilt. .  I still have to shop for 2 darker fabrics for the outside blocks. I believe this will be the orientation but I may change my mind and turn the blocks so the width is vertical. I will need to make that decision after 2 more sets of blocks and I should probably decide before I shop for more fabric as the amount I need will depend on the orientation I choose.




























My original EQ version was posted here and I may go back to that one, minus the blue patches

I have made 9 patch colorwash backgrounds like this using square 9 patch blocks and I thought this would be another variation.  The  quilt with the red flowers on the top of this blog has a 9 patch colorwash background done in square neutral blocks.

By the time I am finished with this

 I may be sorry I ever started. 

We'll see!