finished - March 13, 2018

I bought two lovely soft pink-and-green Jelly Rolls from Missouri Star Quilt Company, called Peaceful Gardens, from Henry Glass, and decided to use one of the rolls to make a quilt called Dripping Diamonds, from an ebook called "Fast, Flirty and Fun - Easy Quilts from Fabulous Fabrics", that I got from Martingale's book section. This quilt will be called "Continental", partly because of its soft, gentle colors, but mostly because it's diamonds - I'll give you a clue, it's based on the theme song from a classic Marilyn Monroe movie! It's really a fast and easy quilt to make using Jelly Roll strips, and it's going to be a lovely quilt for my granddaughter, who graduates and turns 18 this year. I hope she'll like it, and get pleasure from it for many years.

• Step One - arrange the strips in groups of three, making sure to have a good distribution of color and print.
• Step Two - Sew the strip sets together.
• Step Three - Cut the strip sets into diamonds, half going in one direction, half in the other.

• Step Four - Lay out the diamonds and rearrange them until it has a pleasing layout in color and fabric print distribution. (sweep and wash the floor first!) The diamonds go in opposite directions, exactly like a typical square Fence Rail quilt, but on-point.

One lesson I'm taking away from this quilt is to ALWAYS STARCH the strips before cutting the diamonds, or any block that will be cut on the bias. I have a light hand, and usually have no problems with strips or blocks stretching out of shape, but some of these diamonds did stretch on their bias edges, causing a little rippling in the rows. I'm pretty sure I can ease them into being unnoticeable in the quilting, but next time... STARCH!!!

Here it is pinned for quilting. I'll just do simple ditch stitching to make the "rails" puffy, and a basic feather scroll design in the border.