I love the look of skinny strips in quilt piecing. A few quilters have used this technique to great effect recently – Steph Skardal has done a bunch of stuff with straight strips, while Jenny Haynes (also known as Papper Sax Sten) has mastered curvy strips. (I’m hoping to take one of Jenny’s workshops soon!) And lately I’ve discovered Sarah Bond using angled strips to create elongated triangles and diamonds. Sarah’s been running workshops on her technique recently: check out #precisionpieceddiamonds on Instagram. (As much as I love seeing quilt teachers’ own work, it’s even better seeing the amazing variety in their students’ work – which I also think is a sure sign of a good teacher.)

Anyway… I was playing with long strips recently, and created this week’s diamond-y designs. I didn’t set out to recreate Sarah’s approach, but given the similarities, I just had to reference her work.

In my case, I’ve overlapped the large diamond shapes, which creates smaller secondary diamonds. They can be coloured in differently for effect, or left ‘blank’.

Even with a limited palette, there are plenty of combinations and permutations of colour – for the strips themselves and the shapes they enclose.

But sometimes simple is best.

I’ve never actually sewn with skinny strips – I kinda assume I wouldn’t get them as straight or precise as I’d like (and even the slightest smidge of wonkiness would drive me nuts). But I think the best way to do these would be using paper piecing. If you’re interested, you should check out workshops and tutorials from Sarah Bond, Jenny Haynes and Steph Skardal!