“Precious” aka Gemstone Tumbler

No. 9 of my Finish Along List for Q2 is finished!

The sewing hours of the last weeks and month are finally paying off: I have a finish! After we conquered the first hick-up, I adored this project – well, not counting one small bump in between :) Those colors are just so fun to work with and even the weather was complying, when I was ready for the photographs. So brace yourself for a picture heavy blog post!

But let me recap a bit: The project “started” roughly in September 2018 when I was told about the pregnancy of a dear friend. Of course I wanted to sew a baby quilt! The basic design feature was determined: Rainbow. And then we looked through Pinterest ideas and settled on the Tessellation pattern by Alison Glass. We picked fabrics in October and it took me till March – after baby made an early appearance – to finally start working on it. Unfortunately it felt “wrong”. I didn’t love working on it. The design felt off…

I “slept over the problem” for a few days and on my first visit to see “baby” – the Mom and I talked it through. I had figured out, that I prefer to work from a block wise construction that I can fully prep and not a design wall concept where you cut and decide each piece after piece, where the mess takes over the whole sewing room….

So we looked for new inspiration and I stumbled over the Gemstone Tumbler pattern by Emma Jean Janson. And it just “clicked”. I loved working like this. I re-ordered the fabrics and just had to substitute or dismiss a few from the original pull. Then I cut and sewed blocks. And this felt soooo right and suddenly went sooo fast! Please, if you ever stumble across such a mental block: Don’t force yourself, we are all different and create differently. I will not say that I will never work a design wall process but now and for this it was not my thing :)

But before you gloss over from too much text, here are a few more photos:

The other small bump I mentioned was a late night message, probably a sleep-deprived one – I guess all mothers can relate… The context concerning color value/ “darkness” confused me and left me with quite some self-doubt – but that was all resolved quickly the next day.

With some quilts I have no idea how to name them. This one was totally different: I had the name really early on in the process. Precious! Babies (people in general) are so precious… maybe a touch too simple/straightforward but it also fit so well with the pattern. Gemstones are precious too, right? So it stuck and actually went into the process of designing the quilting. The original quilt has simple diagonal straight lines, lovely but I didn’t want to copy it. So I played around with other straight line ideas and then decided to add the gemstone in – and what better than the most precious of all – the diamond?

Here is the “intricate” sketch and the photos of the finished version. For the transfer I punched holes in the paper, drew dots through them with a water soluble marking pen and then connected those for the full design. I sewed with my normal walking foot after figuring out a way where I had to double just two of the lines.

Click on any image to see all pictures in full (as a slideshow).

I love it, when I can find a place to take pictures where they fit the story. This time to fit the recipient, I took the pictures on the kindergarten playground where my Mom works.

Oh, and of course I had to build a fort. I called it a tent at that moment with my Mom strongly disagreeing, apparently tents are supposed to have “fabric” on both sides of the roof. Maybe it was a tarp-tent :)

And here are the details of the binding and the label…

Now off to wash it and I can gift it on Sunday!

Another project to cross of my WIP list. This is number two for the current quarter. Such a great feeling :)

Hope you are all having fun and making progress! Best wishes
xo Melanie

So far this quarter …

Linking up at
Beauties Pageant 34 @ From Bolt to Beauty
Favorite Finish May @ Meadow Mist Design
It is not really a May finish but so close that I hope nobody minds :)

I am linking up with the 2019 Finish Along hosts
I used to link up via She Can Quilt but she appears to be inactive at the moment. But there are so many hosts. You can find them all by using the link on the Instagram @finishalong page. To name a few Capitola Quilter, Marci Girl Designs and Sarah Goer Quilts.