I am a little ashamed it's taken me SEVEN years to blog this quilt. I made this scrappy Diamond Ripples in 2018. It is so old, that a lot of my photos of this make are scattered between old Dropbox files, external hard drives and deep in my iCloud photo storage. I found maybe 30 photos of this make and I decided it was time to give it a permanent place on my site! Let's do it!
The Diamond Ripples pattern released in 2017, it was the third TCJ pattern ever. The pattern includes 4 sizes - a square or rectangle option for both Baby and Throw. The pattern also includes scrappy and non-scrappy material requirements.
Half Square Triangles (HST) were one of my first basic block loves when I found quilting. HSTs are incredibly versatile and there are three main ways you can construct them. You can make 2-at-a-time, 4-at-a-time, or 8-at-a-time. I decided to use the 4-at-a-time method for Diamond Ripples and play with a gradient in color and construction. Here is what the Cover Quilt looks like:
The Diamond Ripples pattern has you choose 6 colors plus the background fabric. Colors 1 and 2 (light pink and peach) are the little "sparkles" of the quilt where they create the diamonds. Then Colors 3 - 6 create your gradient that echos around the diamonds. You can make the color transition as smooth or as bold as you want but it creates a really stunning visual of color echoing out from the diamonds.
For this scrappy solids Diamond Ripples, I wanted to play with multiple gradients in a single quilt. Because there are already two colors that make up the diamonds (color 1 and 2), the pattern design is already divided into 2 specific blocks. I decided to highlight those two blocks even more by giving them completely different color ways. And then to add even more gradient, I decided the background fabric would ALSO be a gradient. The background fabric goes from bright white to a warm grey color. Here is the mock up I created to see if I could make this idea work digitally before I jumped into in real life.
And here is the fabric I pulled, this is all from my stash and I have NO idea what solids I used. Most likely this is Kona cotton though.
It was easy to divide the fabrics into the two distinct blocks when cutting and then I made sure to pair the background square with the right color needed for the HSTs. I somehow didn't take any progress photos so here we are finished!
I had my friend Michelle of Mariposa Quilting work her swirly magic on this top. She is a free motion quilter and is so talented! I bound this quilt in a tight gingham and I backed it in another gingham!
I cried when I found this photo of Everett. He was four years old and the most precious boy. He always loved helping me take finished photos of quilts at this age.
I brought this quilt with me to a photoshoot back in 2019 when I realized it had been almost finished for a year and I had no real "product" photos of it yet.
When you step back and look at this from a distance I love the subtle change you can see in the background fabric. As the colors (pinks and blues) get lighter, the background fabric gets darker and as the colors (pinks and blues) get darker, the background fabric gets lighter. It was basically a reverse double gradient and I love it so much.
I believe this quilt is hanging somewhere at Modern Domestic here in Portland, OR. They have had it since 2019 and I hope it's living a great life!