Patchwork, Please! :: Diamond Patchwork Placemat

Where paper-piecing sometimes feels like the bane of my sewing-existence, I really do enjoy fussy-cutting. And that's what I did, along with choosing to piece the diamond patchwork for this week's project. And just a little note about that fussiness - for me, a 2 1/2" square ruler works great to line things up, and I find it's small enough, I can rotary cut around it without moving a thing on my board.

Fabric-wise, I chose Melody Miller's Ruby Star Spring for the fussy-cuts, and Essex Yarn-Died Linen in Flax for the background and main piece of the mat. The back and binding is of Parson Gray's Curious Nature.

Besides the piecing, where was another change-up . . . I backed my mat front with fusible fleece before I did my quilting.

And for quilting, I followed Ayumi's suggestion to quilt around the focus squares using a coordinating thread. Insert-able trim is not my strong suit, so I chose to accent that area with very dense quilting. I found some delicious variegated pale green (I think it's #3320) from my Tula Pink Aurifil Thread (Thank you, Aurifil!), measured off 3/4" from the vertical seamline, marked with my hera, and proceeded to quilt 9 times in that space. So those lines are verrrry close together. I actually thought the stitching would show up more, but with variegated, you never know what's going to show up where, and I'm plenty happy with it just the same.

I did the binding, again, just like the pattern instructions, and it worked like a charm. I did use a bit of gluestick as I folded my edge over to the front, pressed it, and proceeded to sew that bound edge as straight and neat as could be.

This project was super fun, went together without a hitch, and I certainly plan on using this pattern again!

Project adapted from Patchwork, Please!: Colorful Zakka Projects to Stitch and Give as part of the Zakka 2.0 :: Patchwork, Please sew along. Linking up with finish it up Friday.