HST Diamond Baby Quilt (Tutorial)

Have a charm pack in your stash and a baby in your life?  Add in about a yard of background fabric and you'll have a fun quilt top!

There are a lot of fun layouts you can do with HSTs and after playing with a bunch of them, I really liked this one, inspired by a layout shared to me by my friend Kristin.

You will need:

• A charm pack or at least 42 squares of fabric each 5'' x 5''
• 1 yard of background fabric, cut into 42 squares each 5" x 5"
• 1 1/4 yard of backing fabric
• 1/3 yard of binding fabric

Pair each charm square with a background fabric square.  Draw a diagonal line and make two HSTs.  (Two-at-a-time HST Tutorial)  Make a total of 84 HSTs.

Press and trim your HST all to the same size.  I was able to trim mine to 4 1/4'' but, sadly, not all charm squares are true to size so yours might only trim to 4''.  You will now have 84 HST.   (Note, the quilt only needs 81 so 3 of these are extra.)

Now the fun begins!   Sort your HSTs into 6 piles, keeping like colors together.   You will need:

• 28 HSTs for the large diamond shape (shown in red)

• 12 HSTs for the small diamond shape (show in light blue)

• 15 HSTs for the lower right (show in gray)

• 10 HSTs for the top right (shown in yellow)

• 10 HSTs for the lower left (shown in dark blue)

• 6 HSTs for the top left (shown in green)

 And remember, there will be 3 extra HSTs.

Once the HST are sorted, place the HSTs on your design wall (or floor), following the diagram.

Since it is very easy to twist placement as you carry your blocks from your design wall to your sewing machine, I recommend you assemble the quilt in quadrants.  For example, grab the 16 HSTs that make up the top left.  Then use a webbing technique (tutorial) to help keep everything in place.

Once each quadrant is complete, place it back on the design wall to ensure your pattern is correct and no HSTs were flipped.  Then get started on your next quadrant.

I often sew large quilts this way to avoid lots of long rows of blocks.

To enhance the design, I chose to quilt using my walking foot in a spiral pattern.  (See my spiral quilting tutorial.)  To start, I traced a large thread spool to give me a reasonably sized starting circle and then slowly and carefully started sewing.  

I adjusted the needle position and used the edge of my walking foot to keep things relatively consistent.  The lines of the spiral are about 1/2'' apart.

Once the walking foot quilting is all done, I switch to my FMQ foot and finish the spiral.  If you look carefully at the photo above, you'll notice the blue marking that shows where my FMQ foot was used.

I hope the tutorial was helpful! I've got some fall themed charm packs in my stash and am considering a lap top quilt with this pattern.