Diamonds are Forever- Part 1

It's Thursday everybody and sliding right on into TGIF!  I don't know about you, but it's been a long week for me.  Unlike most, I don't have to get up and join the rat race everyday.  I'm at home for the moment, at first to care for my little boy and now to look for employment.  For anyone looking for a job or switching careers it's not an easy time in the urban jungle.  Of course, I'm technically not located in the "urban jungle" any longer; however, despite looking out my windows onto meticulously manicured suburban lawns blanketed in virgin white snow, it still certainly feels like a jungle!  When I've had a long week of house cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping (all of which I can't stand) I look forward to evenings spent sipping on a glass of wine, putting on my favorite British period piece movie (or as my husband calls them "the Lord Figglebottom Series"),  and working on my latest project.  There are two I'm currently toiling away on and one is a traditional quilt.  The other is an alphabet banner I'm making for my son's room and I'm very excited about it!  I will cover the details of the banner in a later post.

The Diamonds are Forever quilt is the example of a budding designer's happy happenstance.  Let me start off by saying... I suck at math!  No two ways about it.  In fact, I'm so terrible at math I'm a little afraid of it.  Yet, my favorite hobby is nothing but... go figure!  Enter Anne stage left.  She is fantastic with math and has a very strong sense of proper quilting etiquette.  For these reasons she has been my saviour as far as quilting designing goes.  You see, I draw a design and she looks at it and tells me if it's realistic or not.  Most times not!  And in the instance of the Diamonds are Forever quilt I actually started out with one drawing and ended doing something totally different all because Anne took one look at my drawing and said, "I want to see if you can make a mock-up of this."  I took the challenge and quickly realized what Anne already knew.  My design was crazy talk!  So I took the four squares I created and started rotating them into something that made sense to me.  This is what I came up with:

I eventually made two more sets

Based on my mock-ups I created this drawing:

however it originally started out like this:

I'm sure some how my original design might be plausible and if you have ideas on how to attempt it I would LOVE to hear about it!  Especially since Anne and I are hoping to use this blog as a way of generating conversation within the crafting community.  I will continue to report on the progress of Diamonds are Forever so please look out for future posts.  I will also be making this pattern available for sale in the near future.  If you need a project to bust up your stash this is it!

Until then, here's to Friday and a fun filled crafty weekend!