Project Quilting 13-4 Mining for Diamonds

Mining For Diamonds

You can look at this challenge many different ways, but my approach began by mining my stash for this group of fat Quarters in which one print was diamonds. The rest of the group was themed American Indian type designs. I'm not sure how the designer put Diamonds and Indians together, but there you go. So looking on the web, I found a technique that sounded interesting. 
  Basically, you start with a square, sew a border around it and Triangles in the corners. Then you cut that down the middle and each side into 4 sections. (8 in all) then (and here's the magic) you flip each strip and sew it together like that. 

Progress photo showing the original panel and cut and flipped to sew together.

One thing I did NOT do and it was suggested to do is starch heavily. I soon learned why, those pieces wiggled and wobbled every which way and each added border just compounded it. In the end, I have a very distorted small quilt. 

I am disappointed in my execution and not sure if I want to finish it. Should I get a different batting than I usually use to disguise some of my mistakes? Should I even bother to waste any more fabric (backing) and time to complete it since it is so wonky? 

12" x 7" Mug rug

My solution was to make a small version and starch the Heck out of it to see if that helped. Of course limited amounts left of the diamond and coordinating fabrics but I ended up with a mug rug. Because it was smaller, I made 6 cuts not 8. It still turned out interesting and starch made a big difference.  It's such a simple way to make a complex looking design IF you remember to starch. 

This is my first mug rug but I think it goes well with the coffee cup in our collection from the Cherokee Nation.  

Lessons learned:

I already said that starch is the answer to many of my problems so that's a given. While these blocks create an interesting secondary pattern when sewn together as I did, I lost some points, lost matching up seams so those are things to look out for. I really wanted to make these as a stripe with a lot of negative space to make the quilt. I think I would do that the next time. Not to mention the entire quilt was created on the Fat quarter's colorways, which wasn't easy to find coordinating fabric in my stash. I don't even know how I ended up with these FQ to begin with. I ended up using the gray in the mug rug because it was the only piece I hadn't used and had enough of to complete the smaller piece. 

All in all, I tried something new- failed miserably and redeemed myself with a smaller piece. I might try it again someday.