How to Quilt Diamonds

How to Quilt Diamonds – using the straight line quilting techniques that you’ve learned from me recently. You are going to learn how to quilt diamonds in a variety of different styles.

One of my quilting goals this year was to work with diamonds. Holy heck, I’ve made a LOT of diamond quilts this year, and can definitely check that goal off.

If you are looking for a tutorial or a pattern with diamonds, and aren’t yet ready to quilt a diamond motif, I’ve got both! Here is a fantastic, scrappy diamonds quilt tutorial. This is where you can find the Farmhouse Plaid quilt pattern, made with either small diamonds or large diamonds.

Go, read through the tutorial. Take a look at the pattern. Make a diamond quilt. Then, come on back over here for quilting. How to Baste is also a good tutorial before starting this quilting project. This is a pin to save, so you remember to come back and read this tutorial when you are ready (if you aren’t already ready today).

Now, before you take my expert advice, you need to consider what type of “expert” I really am. Roll your quilt well before putting any of it into the throat of your machine, and you can avoid rookie mistakes like this.

Straight Line Quilting Diamonds

This pink and white Farmhouse Plaid baby quilt is the first quilt I’m showing you for how to quilt diamonds. On this one, I used straight line quilting and quilted ¼” to the left and right of every single seam.

Alright, so you’ve got your quilt made and basted, and you are ready to rock and roll! Quilting diamonds starts in the upper right corner of the quilt.

Start rolling the quilt in from the corner, keeping the roll lined up with the seam lines. (Side note, how fabulous is that pink polka dot backing? Plus, it’s flannel!)

Keep rolling, all the way to the upper left corner of the quilt.

Line up your quilt with your sewing machine so that the seam you are using as a guide is ¼” left of your needle.

Start stitching, following the seam as your guide.

Once you’ve sewn the length of the first seam, go back to the starting point. This time line up the needle ¼” to the right of the seam and again sew the length of the seam.

Now, you get to unroll the quilt a bit and move on to the next seam. Again sewing to both the left and right of the seam.

Keep on keeping on, one seam at a time, until you reach the corner where you started your roll. The blue lines show the seams that will be sewn in this first go round.

Then, turn the quilt 180* and start rolling from the upper right corner. This time you don’t have to roll quite so far, as you’ve already done half of this direction. Just roll until you reach the first seam that hasn’t been quilted, and then get to quilting. The white lines show the seams you’ll be quilting this time around.

Congratulations, you are halfway through! And, finding that how to quilt diamonds isn’t nearly as daunting as imagined!

This is what the quilt looks like so far.

Now it’s time to roll the quilt from the bottom right corner, and quilt the seams that go the other direction.

Now, I bet you are thinking, “Wow, Darcy, the top and bottom edges of your quilt are a hot mess.”

You’d be right. They are a hot mess. That’s for two reasons. One, for quilts that are made of unusual shapes, I like to keep the quilt top as is until I finish the quilting. Then I go back and trim it to square/rectangular.

The second reason involves attempting to save fabric. The Farmhouse Plaid quilt pattern gives cutting directions for enough diamonds for all those edge pieces to be full diamonds. But my fabric was just long enough that I could use the scraps from the end for the pink diamonds at the very top (and the white diamonds at the very bottom) rather than cutting additional diamonds. In this example, it doesn’t matter that the pink diamond isn’t actually a diamond. Nor that the selvage is showing. All of that is going to get cut off once I trim the edges to straight.

And that is how to quilt diamonds! But don’t worry, this tutorial isn’t so short. Keep reading for some variations on how to quilt diamonds that add a little pizazz to your quilt!

How to Quilt Diamonds – Sparse Quilting

This second set of How to Quilt Diamonds instructions is very similar to the first, but because this is a couch sized throw quilt rather than a baby quilt, AND because it’s made from snowflake fabric and likely to be out only a few weeks/months each year, I only quilted every other seam instead of all of them. A baby quilt needs more quilting, as it’s likely to be washed more often and needs to be sturdier to keep up.

Just like the instructions from the smaller quilt, sew ¼” on either side of the seam.

Then, skip the next seam and go straight to the seam after that.

Since it’s hard to see the seam lines in photographs, here’s the same photo with some extra lines added.

Continuing this pattern across the quilt, as well as only quilting every other line of the perpendicular seams, led to the diamonds looking like they were grouped in a 4-patch so to speak.

Quilting Smaller Diamonds

As the diamonds get smaller, the gap between quilting should also get smaller. I mean really, that’s true of any quilting. Itty bitty pieces need quilting that is denser, so that all the little seams are better secured.

These diamonds came from 2½” strips and are much smaller than the diamonds seen so far in the Farmhouse Plaid pattern. You can read all about how to piece a diamond quilt from strips of fabric in this Scrappy Diamond quilt tutorial.

And, if you look closely, I bet you know exactly where this next part of the How to Quilt Diamonds tutorial is going!

That’s right, straight line quilting, but only every three seams.

Wait, wait, wait! You said smaller pieces of fabric needed denser quilting, but now you’re jumping from sewing every seam, to sewing every other seam and now to every third seam?

Well, yes.

But also, these diamonds are so small that even every third seam means the quilting is denser than the previous examples.

You don’t need me to walk you through how to roll the quilt and stitch the quilting lines again. It’s all above, so I’ll just leave these two photos for you with these instructions: quilt ¼” outside of the seam once every third seam as shown in these white lines.

Then, do the same with the seams on the other diagonal, as shown in these red lines.

Double Diamonds

The last variation on How to Quilt Diamonds is double diamonds, and definitely my favorite! I only recommend this variation on quilts made from larger diamonds, otherwise you’ll be quilting this one quilt top for all of eternity.

Start as before, with a single line of quilting ¼” to the left of a seam. Then, instead of moving over to the right of the seam, line your needle up ¼” to the left of the line you just quilted and quilt a second line, this time ½” left of the seam.

Once you’ve got two lines left of the seam, do the same ¼” and another ¼” to the right of the seam, and then move along to the next seam.

The quilting lines really only show in the darkest of the diamonds, but I promise there are double quilting lines through all of the lighter diamonds too.