Diamond Chain Quilt & tutorial

Yea! It's finished!
I stitched the binding on last night and washed it up this morning.



The binding adds just a nice contrast of color for the quilt.

quilt stats:
size: approx. 41" x 52"
fabrics: from the collections of Nicey Jane by Heather Bailey, Park Slope by Erin McMorris, Mezzanine by Patty Young, Pretty Please by Jennifer Paganelli, Aviary by Joel Dewberry, Flights of Fancy by Paula Prass and a pink print that was a gift from some friends (no info. on the selvedge)
Kona white
backing fabric: Patty Reed Designs for Fabric Traditions, NTT

and here's a little tutorial on how I made a block for this quilt...

First, you need to make a template for the center triangles. Use graph paper and draw a triangle with a base of 4" and a height of 4". Use your clear rotary cutting ruler and add .25" seam allowance on each side of the triangles.
Cut 8 triangles for each row using a 5" x 44" piece of fabric.

For the outer borders, cut 4 - 3.5" x 44" strips of fabric for each set of 8 blocks. Stitch one of the sides of the triangle onto the 3.5" fabric strip. (I chain pieced mine, making all 8 blocks at one time)

Press your triangle and trim the border. Make sure that when you are sewing on your borders that you leave enough fabric extending along the top and bottom of the triangle to allow for trimming. This block does have quite a bit of "waste" fabric, so just be prepared to add to your scrap pile.

Here's the block with both borders added on.

Now trim it to the correct shape. Line up your ruler along the base of your triangle center and measure up 6" to get the correct height (my ruler is a 6" wide ruler so, I used it to trim the top and bottom at one time).

Here's your completed block. Make 8 of these for each row in your quilt.
As long as you make them with all the same seam allowances, all your blocks should be the same. Here's the start of my layout for this quilt.

For the ends of the quilt, I just stitched on strips of fabric to each end block and trimmed the whole quilt square when I had the quilt top sewn together. (In this quilt, white fabric on the left blocks and pink fabric on the right side.) Sorry, I don't have a picture of that, but I think you get the idea.
Now, you're ready to sew your quilt top together!

I'm sure there may be other ways to make this quilt, but this was just the way I made it. It was quick and easy and only used one template. There is quite a bit of "waste" fabric that you end up cutting off when trimming the blocks, so this may not be the quilt for you, if you don't like adding to your scrap pile. I also don't know if there is a pattern like this already available. I came up with this design when I was trying to come up with a "chain" look in a quilt.

Please let me know if you have any questions!
Happy Sewing!
~Jessica

...and I'm linking up with amylouwho's Sew & Tell!

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