diamond panes in Carkai

Today I have another quilt to show you that was inspired by the Farm Barn at Shelburne Farms. I’ve always loved the details on the barn, and while snapping an inspiration photo for my post for the Quilt Local blog tour, I took a few of this section of the barn.

I was intrigued by these diamonds on either side of the windows – I like how they’re slightly curved, and I loved the thought of being able to show off fabrics in that diamond section.

(a selection of the prints that will be available at Nido when the line is available)

I was hanging onto this idea until I found the right fabric, and surprisingly enough, the right fabric came around sooner than I expected. A friend snagged a bundle of Carolyn Friedlander’s upcoming Carkai fabric for Robert Kaufman. She brought it over one day and I couldn’t stop exclaiming over it. So much so, perhaps, that she felt she ought to leave it with me. I pretended to protest, but really I was already thinking about this quilt idea.

I separated the low volume prints from the brighter prints and drew up a template for my curved diamond. I don’t sew curves too often, and I can’t say I have any experience drawing up my own template, so it’s certainly not perfect, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that my blocks actually looked as I was hoping. I had to adjust the template a few times, and it’s still not right (you can see that the diamond sides don’t always line up as I’d like), but having already cut out all the pieces, I had to go with it and be ok with the non-matching points.

I’m excited about the design though, and I think I’ll spend some more time working on the templates to get those curves to work out better.

[you could achieve a similar look using a drunkards path block, but since I wanted my center diamond to be one solid fabric (not pieced) and to have a less curvy shape, I decided to draft my own]

Oh, and Carkai? Having sewn with it, I find myself wanting a whole bunch more. Carolyn’s work is superb, and I think the colors in this line are my favorite of her lines so far. I’m so happy that we won’t have to wait all that long for it to be available – December is right around the corner!