A finish....

...of epic(ly small) proportions! My brother and sister-in-law welcomed their first little almost a week ago. My sister-in-law's water broke at 32 weeks and she was on hospital bedrest for 2 weeks before Evalyn Marina entered the world. She's definitely a preemie ---- 6 weeks early, but doing well! I whipped this mini quilt up when Lisa started bedrest 'cause we knew when Evalyn arrived, she'd be small and likely spend some time in NICU. I wanted her to have something 'homemade with love' during her stay. The quilt can double as a stroller blanket, too, if it makes it home.  {grin}  If not, no worries; my intent was that this be a pretty little workhorse. I want it to be used and loved and of comfort......even if that means its usefulness is decidedly short!

I started with 9" squares of print and background --- I drew X's on the background squares and sewed a 1/4" seam away from the drawn lines on the diagonal. Then I quartered the squares, cutting once on the central X axis and once on the central Y axis (yeah, geometry!) ---- and finally cut each resulting square in half on the drawn diagonal line. Pretty fast, accurate half-square triangles. I was working with squares cut for another quilt project, so this struck me as the quickest means to getting where I wanted to be. 

{A disclaimer: I started out to make an hourglass quilt, something along the lines of Cluck, Cluck, Sew or Diary of a Quilter, but for whatever reason my brain stopped working at some point and I miscut, giving me HSTs instead which led me down the primrose path to diamonds...} 

I quilted a 1/4" away from each seam line, outlining the diamonds as I went. A couple of my diamonds shifted during the joining process (not too surprising --- I must've pieced and re-pieced this top at least 4 times because I worked on it far too late into the night to be of much good in the accuracy department!) so the quilting shifted, too.  {grin}  Backed and bound in one of the few DS Quilts fabrics I like ---- for whatever reason, Denyse knows how to do dots. I'm not wild about many of her other prints, but dots and plaids she just about nails for my liking!

The quilt looks pretty cute hanging out with Evalyn, which makes me happy! Mission accomplished!