Quilt Tutorial- Diamonds in the Rough

I have so enjoyed watching my temperature quilt come together, and I’m loving the pattern I used. You can see the first temperature quilt post here– it will tell you all about what a temperature quilt is and why you might want to make one. It will also show you the tutorial for how to make this Diamonds in the Rough quilt.

Because a temperature quilt is a year-long project, it’s not coming together very quickly, and I wanted to see what the quilt top would look like all put together, so I made a quick one out of scraps on a very snowy day.

I sewed, sewed, sewed, as it snowed, snowed, snowed, and here we are now, nearly 3 months later and I’m FINALLY writing about it and showing you photos!

Seriously guys, I had snow right up to my front door! Here is a photo of that morning. Keep in mind this was after snowstorm two of four that week, that snow depth got a lot higher in a hurry.

I had been blogging about quilting for about a year, and was quickly finding that if I only quilted for “work” it stopped being fun. Quilting has always been a method of stress relief for me, and it was rapidly becoming stress inducing instead.

I gave myself permission (in the midst of most insane snow I’ve ever seen in my life!) to sit and sew, just for the pleasure of it.

I didn’t take a single photo of the process of making this quilt. I felt a little guilty, that I had a quilt pattern in mind to write and didn’t follow through to write it. However, I am working this year on keeping my mental health in a good place, and I was completely selfish and forced myself to stop thinking about how I could turn this quilt into “work.”

Not counting it as “work” meant that while I finished this quilt before the snow melted (but not before a long delay due to a snow/rain/ice power outage) I didn’t not immediately baste and quilt it, so it sat on a hanger for far too long, and only just recently got finished.

This post is mostly about this finished quilt that I’ve dubbed Diamonds in the Rough, but it’s also a Temperature Quilt update, and as such, a quick tutorial on how to put together these blocks.

Because the temperature quilt is put together one column – one month – at a time, rather than by blocks, I wanted to show you how I’m managing quilt strips that are 4 inches wide by 62 inches long.

Not well, as it turns out. It is really hard to get good photos of this quilt in progress! You can check out my Instagram for some evidence of this.

The way I’ve been handling it is to make 4 days at a time, and sew those together, but keep each set of four days separate from the others. This is what that looks like.

During odd months, I leave them as is, four together, and pin a little piece of paper with the date so I can put them in the right order later.

Every other month, I can sew days 1-4 of one month, to days 1-4 of the next. And the same with days 5-8, 9-12, and so on and so on.

That way I’m not getting overwhelmed, I’m not losing pieces, and it’s easy to pack up in between sewing sessions.

Still, it’s slow going. And while I could work ahead, since I’m pulling weather data from a previous year, I do want to continue to work slow, to see this quilt come together one day at a time (or 7 days at a time as I tend not to work on it daily, but on weekends).

And that’s where this Diamonds in the Rough quilt came in. Same pattern. But put together all at once.

Now, while I was intending to just sew for fun (and got the full benefit of that intent during the making of this quilt) it has since continued to bounce around in my brain, in a marketable way, and I’m excited to announce that there is an actual quilt pattern, coming soon, that I think is a fun twist on this pattern!

So, for now, check out the original tutorial post that will help you make this pattern. And stay tuned… for a new pattern coming soon!