Pink & Brown Diamond Baby Quilt

We finally have a little girl in the family!!

We welcomed baby Brynn over the holidays and she’s been a joy to love on and hold.  And, of course, this gave me a chance to work on a new baby quilt!  I also got to take some newborn photos of the sweet new family.  Here are a few of my favorite photos from the shoot:

On to the quilt:

I’ve been thinking about doing a diamond quilt for a long time.  When I heard that Brynn’s parents decorated her room in brown and pink, I knew that this would be an adorable pattern for a baby quilt.

Have you ever made a diamond quilt?  If not, you should – it was a lot of fun!  Here’s how I did it:

First, the fabric – I knew I wanted flannel for the baby blanket and I stuck with it but it really limited my choices at the fabric store.  I picked out a white flannel, light brown and white pattern, dark brown, and three differently patterned pinks.

Cut each fabric into 4″ strips.

Once you have the strips cut out, lay them along a measurement line on your cutting pad and cut the end off at a 45˚ angle.

Now that you have the first line, line up your ruler at the 4″ mark along the same angle.

This leaves you with several of these!

The amount of diamonds needed depends on how big your quilt will be.  I used about 62 diamonds of different colors and about 34 white diamonds for this baby quilt.

Piecing the top:

The quilt is put together in diagonal strips.

So, in the first corner will just be one diamond.  The next row will be three diamonds.  The next five, then seven, then nine, and then a full-size row of eleven diamonds.  For the size quilt that I wanted, I used 5 full-size strips before making the smaller strips again to finish out the shape.

Sewing the diamonds together to make the strips is a little tricky at first until you get used to it.  Place diamonds, fronts together, and offset the points about 1/4″  to have the straight edges align when opened.

When you press them open, you should see a straight edge.  Then clip the excess points sticking out.

Once you get all the rows together, you’ll have edges that look like this.  Just trim the white diamonds about 1/4″ above the joined middles to give a nice edge for binding.

Stack the trimmed top with batting and backing.  I quilted in the ditch and then bound it in the dark brown to finish.  I never got great photos of the quilt.  I needed to take pictures at night, the lighting wasn’t good and I never could fit the whole quilt into the shot.  So, I’m sorry for the bad pics, but you get the idea.

Although you can’t see the whole quilt here, you can see the fabric and colors in the natural light.  Add an adorable baby and it’s perfect!