These four blue batiks will all be incorporated into my Double Diamond Storm at Sea variation.  Five new Inklingo Collections were released Sunday night for various sizes of Storm at Sea — 4.5″, 6″ ,6.75″, 9″ and 12″ blocks.  There are a couple of extra shapes in each collection too, which really open up some design possibilities.  I already know there are some stars in my future using shapes from these collections.  I know I want to make a quilt incorporating different sizes of the blocks as well.  The free Design Book is a fabulous bonus that contains tons of information, including methods for constructing the blocks, as well as some shaded and unshaded design sheets.  The first thing I did was print out one of the design sheets and sort out what I needed to print for my first block.

I decided to first do a 45″ wall hanging using the 6.75″ templates in the Double Diamonds layout that can be seen at the bottom of the page here but with a twist.  I’m using all four of the batiks in the picture above as well as some white.  It took me only a couple of minutes to figure out my page sizes, cut and press the fabric to freezer paper, print and then start stitching.   I think batiks are my favourite fabrics to work with — and they’re perfect for this design as there are spots where a lot of seams are going to meet.  As batiks are such a fine fabric and press so perfectly, I won’t be fighting too  much bulky fabric at those points.  Here’s my centre square:

The back of my centre square was pressed in  a second thanks to the batiks.

I have the diamonds and their surrounding triangles printed and cut out, ready to go.  The little squares and their surrounding QSTs are printed, ready to cut

Last week Crispy asked about the cutting line, whether it was printed as well as the stitching line.  As I know the ink in my printer will rinse out without any problems, I printed the QSTs on this fabric in a darker red than I normally would use.   If you click on this picture to enlarge it, you can see that both the stitching and cutting lines, as well as matching points, are printed on the shapes.

I had hoped to go to the Etobicoke Quilt Guild show on Saturday but woke up with a monster migraine.  However, I got lots done on my Alabama Beauty blocks and have now got 3 of them put together.  One more block and the first of the circles will appear in its entirety.  I’m not sure how large this will grow but I think it may well end up as a large lap quilt as I want a dozen or more circles in the quilt.

Our weather this week sounds as though it’s going to be wonderful with a forecast that seems to indicate we may well see 70 by Friday.  I can’t wait!!   The nights are still quite cool, but to have days in the high 60s or low 70s in late March and early April?  Huge treat!

Smudge was very busy on the weekend, guarding the toys.  I think he knew I was about to grab them all up and put them back in the basket.

Lester decided it was a good time for a nap.