Diamond Cuddlekiss

In July, I did my first solo trunk show, and in the midst of gathering all the quilts and figuring out what I wanted to say, I realized it was absolutely, positively important that I made the Diamond Cuddlekiss quilt I had saved in my mock-up folder.

This was important, because one of the themes of my presentation was that it's ok to not follow the pattern exactly (I'm terrible at following the pattern exactly).  And this quilt illustrated that perfectly.  I was recoloring the diagram in EQ8 and clicked wrong and ended up with this absolutely gorgeous secondary pattern.  When my son pulled the quilt out of the pile at the show, he accidentally held it up sideways at first, and the audience went wild - they loved how the sideways, recolored version looked like argyle.  I've added this version to my to-make list (I think it would be fun in Christmas colors!) - the versitility of this template keeps surprising me.

If you want to make your own diamond (or argyle!) Cuddlekiss, it's pretty easy: instead of using the background fabric as corners to the templates, use the other color of template.  Then assemble the quilt using the checkerboard layout.  That's it!

I used a mixture of straight-line and free-motion quilting to finish my quilt.  First, I sewed straight lines in a grid on the white to stabilize everything.  Next, I sewed diagonal lines through the middle and on the edges of the black.  Finally, I switched to my free motion foot and did two pink diamonds and one black diamond in each motif.  I marked all the lines with my hera marker before stitching them.  

I overbought the white fabric for this quilt just in case the color placement didn't work out once I started sewing.  But because it did, I had plenty extra to bind the quilt in that same white fabric.  I like how using the same fabric for the border and binding makes it look like I just used a really fat binding on the quilt.  I also had enough fabric left to make two more blocks for the back of the quilt.  I thought it would be funny to make the "X" and "O" shapes backwards as a little Easter egg to anyone paying close attention to the front and back together.  The color difference shown here shows that the black on the front wasn't quite as black as I thought it was (but time was tight and this was the best-sized piece of black yardage I could find in my stash). 

And that is the Diamond Cuddlekiss quilt!  What do you think - do you prefer the traditional row layout, the diamonds, or the argyle?  I think they are all lovely!