big diamond, little diamond – a straight line quilting pattern

Lately I’ve been quilting most of my quilts, especially the smaller ones, with straight line quilting. I love random straight line quilting, like on this quilt, and I’m also quite fond of diagonal quilting, especially with double or triple quilting lines for a little something extra.

I’ve wanted to try something new though, so I was happy when I thought of this little variation (inspired in part by the quilting on this mini quilt by Kate).

I love how these quilting lines intersect in the middle to form one large diamond, along with several little diamonds along the midpoint.

Want to try out this pattern? Here’s what you’ll need:

• A quilt ready for quilting (probably easier to do this on a smaller quilt!)
• Washable marker (I use Mark B Gone, which I buy at Joann’s)
• Walking foot (not required, but certainly helpful when quilting straight lines)
• Edge guide, if you have one

(click any image to see it larger if you’d like!)

So here’s my pretend quilt. To start, measure along the long sides of your quilt and use a washable marker to mark the centerpoint of each long side (note: make sure you’ve squared up your quilt so the long sides are equal in length – otherwise this design won’t work out so well). Draw a line across the middle of the quilt, connecting the two points.

Starting from one upper corner, draw a diagonal line from the upper corner to the opposite centerpoint marking. Repeat for each corner, and you should end up with marked lines that look like the ones above.

Stitch along one of your marked lines, creating a sideways ‘V’. Now decide how far apart you’d like your quilting lines. If you have an edge guide for your machine, set the guide at your desired distance. (For the manly baby quilt, I used a distance of 1 1/4″, but this is really up to you.) Use the guide to follow your first stitch line, keeping the needle down when you reach the marked horizontal centerpoint line you drew earlier, and pivoting to continue stitching to the opposite corner. Continue until you’ve filled in this section, as shown in the image above.

[Note: if you don’t have an edge guide, you could instead decide what distance you’d like between your quilting lines, draw them on with a washable marker and stitch along those lines.]

Repeat for the opposite side of the quilt.

You can see how your lines will intersect along the horizontal centerpoint line to create a row of little diamonds (shown in this photo in the solid gray section).

The final part is to fill in the top and bottom triangular sections that are left without any quilting. I opted to echo the triangular shape, using quilting lines that were the same distance apart as in the middle section of the quilt. On the manly baby quilt I left an empty space of 3″ and then started these quilting lines.

I think this is a fun variation on diagonal quilting, and I hope you do too! If there are any questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll answer there.