I bought a new camera

It pleases me. I’ve been following around the poor kittehs all weekend, and they are clearly tired of the camera already.

I realized that I’ve got a number of photos uploaded to flickr that I never blogged about. I’ve got a big finished project that I’m too tired to coherently post about right now, so here’s some sewing miscellany to tide you over.

I finally stitched the diamonds together, and boy, that was No Fun. The paper mockup was helpful, but I still had difficulties lining up the rows of diamonds. There’s a couple of corners where you can see a jog but hopefully it won’t be too noticeable! I’m thinking that a 1/8" shift isn’t terribly glaring. If I were to sew these again, I’d mark some darts along the diamond edges to help with lining them up. Small cutting errors really throw the alignment off in this project.

The diamond strip is destined for a pillow. The front will just be this panel and some linen, and the back will be patterned with a hidden zipper down the center. I’m also planning on sewing piping around the edge in a contrast fabric.

I’m still trying to decide what pillow #2 will be. I was originally going to simplify the diamond idea by cutting longer parallelograms (so a diagonal stripe of diamonds would be one piece), but then I saw this:

The small clipping is a pillow from a recentish Domino magazine. Rather than using striped fabric, I thought it would be a great idea to piece the stripes together myself with all the leftover linen and blue+orange fabrics. The jury’s still out on this one because it does look like a ton of work. Although it will undoubtedly be easier to figure out than the diamonds!

17 Comments so far

  1. Peacock Chic - March 16th, 2008 @9:46 pm

    Wow I am lovin that orange and blue combo. I have been lusting after it for months in every incarnation and here it is again. Simply Fabulous.

    Hey and did you steal my cat? I was getting weird deju moments looking at your cat. I had to go find Kira (my cat) to make sure she was still here :O)

  2. Julia - March 16th, 2008 @11:09 pm

    Wow, I’m so impressed with your planning and sketchings! I love the look of that clipping…very neat. Your diamond panel is amazing too! Love it.

  3. mel - March 17th, 2008 @6:40 am

    Those diamonds are awesome!! I love the fabrics and color combos – and I can not imagine all the work involved in lining them up properly – it looks perfect!

  4. Kirsten - March 17th, 2008 @8:17 am

    I love the colors of the diamonds! They will make one beautiful pillow!

    Have fun with the new toy!

  5. Elizabeth - March 17th, 2008 @9:43 am

    Your cat is wonderful. She looks exactly like my dear Tortie, Lydia did. I know, everyone with a Tortie is saying the same thing, but they are the most delightful and distinctive cats.

  6. stacey - March 17th, 2008 @11:02 am

    the colors are great, but what a project that must have been!!!!!

  7. mari - March 17th, 2008 @11:17 am

    Your kitty looks like my kitty! :)

    Cute pic.

  8. east.west - March 17th, 2008 @1:05 pm

    what kind of camera did you get? i need to get a new one so badly and those pictures are really lovely…

  9. seedless grape - March 17th, 2008 @1:49 pm

    Looks like you’re having fun with the new camera! I think the diamond pillow looks great, and not just because I’m a big fan of blue and orange. It’ll be a beautiful FO!

  10. Jacki - March 17th, 2008 @5:05 pm

    I love the fabric combo in the diamonds! Congrats on the new camera – photography = fun! And blue and orange together always rocks. :)

  11. Emma - March 17th, 2008 @6:39 pm

    Ooh, congrats on the new camera! Lovely photos.

  12. Heather - March 18th, 2008 @10:05 pm

    OK, I must be tired, too, because when I read ‘recent Domino magazine’, I thought you meant a magazine about dominos!!

    I love your diamonds, that bird is a killer:)

  13. Sheila - March 19th, 2008 @8:04 am

    Congrats on getting a new camera. Isn’t it a wonderful change? I recently got a new camera and took a picture of my daughter’s lunch salad, then said, “WOW!” I couldn’t believe the difference in the photo quality. Everyone is running from me these days too. I’ve had to resort to flowers to get any cooperation at all.

  14. Abby - March 19th, 2008 @9:44 am

    Lovely, lovely diamonds piecing. Truly, no one will notice the jogs at that small size.

    For the stripey quilt, I think you should look into strip piecing the stripes and then cutting it into the blocks necessary to achieve the pillow. That might cause some fabric wastage but would be waaaaaay faster and easier than assembling the stripe components of each block individually.

  15. nova - March 20th, 2008 @9:35 am

    Those diamonds are beyond fabulous. I heart everything about them.

  16. pamela wynne - March 21st, 2008 @4:38 pm

    you are going to do great things with this camera!!

    & the diamonds look really fantastic. I am so jealous — I cannot even get rectangles to work. :(

  17. Brenda - March 21st, 2008 @8:06 pm

    Great photos with your new camera! I think the cats are secretly thrilled to be so photo-worthy, but of course being cats they have to pretend disdain.

    I think the diamonds are turning out fab! It’s a really cheerful design and color palette.