Diamond Chains...the Quilting!

Okay, so I was supposed to post about the quilting I did on this a week ago but I hadn't even done the quilting yet. I finally did the quilting after getting some major helpful ideas from hubby and posted some pics yesterday. Then guess what I did...I quilted it some more! Not a lot. Just a tweak. Then last night I talked to hubby again about the binding and I actually did that as well. So my Diamond Chains quilt is officially finished! Since this is part of my quilt along, I do want to include a little bit of the process.

First, I decided that I wanted to do a vertical take on this diamond quilting from Film in the Fridge. I wanted to place the diamond in that open area on the upper right, but once I played with drawing it out, hubby and I came to the conclusion that it wouldn't work the way I wanted it to. He helped me with some ideas and suggested this.

I liked it but I decided it would be easier on me if the three lines together fell right on the blocks so I redid it a bit.

The only thing that worried me is that the lines would be too close together to really see those larger open diamond places. Well, when I started quilting it, that's exactly what happened so I ended up quilting three lines, skipping three lines, quilting three lines, skipping...well, you get the idea. That made my open diamond spaces much larger and gave it more of a design. However, it also gave me great big open diamonds that needed something. Hubby suggested doing some type of FMQ in the middle which is exactly what I was thinking. I just wasn't looking forward to having only done FMQ on one other quilt.
I decided to do a flower and, since roses are on the back of the quilt, I went with that. I did a little research online for some ideas and came across this from Quilting by Jan. I drew out an idea of what I wanted to do in the blocks.

I used my Marker B Gone pen to draw this out in one of the blocks and went to town. I will say that I tried it without marking it out but I am still too new at FMQ. I had to pull it out because I didn't go far enough over and it only filled one half of the diamond. After that I made sure i drew it out in all the diamonds.

Here's a close-up of one of the flowers I took today. The lighting is crazy cause I was under a tree. You can also see the extra tweak I added to the diamonds. I went back in and added another line that runs along the interior of each quilted diamond 1/4 inch away from the inside line. I thought it just kind of emphasized the diamond shapes.

I had a couple of choices on the binding. I was trying to decide between the mini-floral fabric (I had enough left over) and just using the Kona Crimson. I happened to double check and realized I had some of the orange left so I decided to create the sense of no border and continued space by using the Crimson all around except where the Chains begin and end. There I used my remaining orange to make it look as if it carried right off the fabric.

You can also see that double line here. Anywhere that should have been a large diamond, I added that extra line.
I never did get a great picture of the overall quilting but here is the quilt itself.

It was very difficult to find lighting to hit it just right so you could see the quilting well.

So I am done! Another one down!