Kutch Diamonds

Kutch Diamonds
So much fun quilting this, although having spent over 100 hours on the quilting so far, it is time to finish it and start on something new!

 The following are work in progress photos:

Love this little swirl with the cheeky horn at the top

Love"egg and dart" border, a friend is designing a ruler like this for me :-)

Feather spine

Large diamond blocks in border

Smaller diamond blocks 

Centre of quilt all done

Add caption

Still need to quilt infills on large diamond blocks in border

My favourite block design in the quilt

Threads I used:
Glide - which for this project behaved impeccably and gave me no trouble at all
Madeira Polyneons - my favourite quilting thread so far
Precencia - hated this, so much fluff!
Bottomline - for micro stitching, used in all the main colours, stitched beautifully, but the Green colour 613 caused LOTS of trouble, will keep this one for bobbin from now on
Needle - used size 14 throughout for all threads
Wadding - Quilters dream cotton 100%

Due to the thickness of the seams in places I have had a few bumps and when doing ruler work I occasionally had trouble when moving anti clockwise between 4 o'clock and 3 o'clock.

I have mainly stuck to my original drawings for the quilting design, with just a few minor changes.

The original pattern, if I followed it, would have had an extra border on, but this would have made the quilt larger than 96", which is the maximum size for this quilt to be if I am going to enter it into a show, so I have omitted the last border and decided to do a decorative stitch on the outside binding.

Quilting completed, now to just add some crystals 

Back of quilt

In order to add a bit of "diamondy bling" to the quilt, I have bought a hot fix tool for crystals and started adding a few crystals, but this is sooooo addictive and once you start, you don't want to stop!  I hope I have added just the right amount of crystals and not overdone it, but I am happy with it. Now to post it off to Malvern, where I have entered it in the category "Diamonds are forever"

Posting the quilt

Being the first large quilt that I am entering into a show, I wasn't too sure about how to post it.  I have read some advise that states that it should be rolled around an inner tube and others that said to post it in a box. Having spent so much time blocking it, I decided to go with a tube.  This proved to be not as easy as I thought, the fabric shops I asked for tubes, did have some, but the longest was around 60", so a friend suggested getting a plastic drainpipe from the hardware store.  I was very pleased to get one, felt a bit foolish driving home with it sticking out of the passenger window…
Wrapped my quilt beautifully around the tube, with the acid free paper and then bubble wrap to stop any water damage before wrapping it in strong brown paper. Then went online to organise the collection of said quilt and NO ONE would accept a parcel that length! Maximum size anyone would take, and that was only one company, was 70" and was it expensive! Even more once I have added the insurance , so it was duly unwrapped and folded up and put into a box just big enough to contain it (SOB…all that blocking gone to waste!).  Back to the computer to book the collection and it was not much cheaper to go in a box.  At least I know it has arrived as it was signed for. Just hope the fold creases will hang out before the start of the show. Note to self…find out how other quilters post their quilts! iIf anyone has any advise on this, please leave a comment here, I would really appreciate it.