African Village Quilt with Dancers using Diamond blocks

I've completed my African Village Quilt with all diamond blocks.  The dancers in the diamond blocks, the bodies of the houses and the borders are all African Fabrics, or African designed fabrics made in Holland.  The border fabric is mud cloth made in Gambia. It is soft and gauzy. It worked well in the borders but the wax fabrics are easier to use for piecing since they have less give. Because the African fabrics were all so different, I washed them before I used them. The wax fabrics were really waxy prior to washing but soft afterwards.  I found these fabrics at the Etsy shop, Tambo Collection.  They had a great selection of fabrics and the prices are reasonable.

Here is the back of the quilt.  The central fabric is Kente cloth made in made in Holland. The tops and bottom strips are Kona Cotton "Cheddar"!

I really like the motion in the Kente Cloth print.  It's great designing. 

In the live and learn department:

If you compare the photo of the quilt above with the pattern diagram below, you'll see that the quilt has 2 layers of "lawn" below the huts while there is only 1 in the pattern.  When I printed the PDFs paper piecing files, I didn't change the print specifications to 100% which is necessary to get an accurate pattern.  I had 1 inch markers on the patterns but didn't check them since they were my own patterns.  I would have caught my error if I had put a ruler on the inch marker.  The pattern on file is accurate but the printing wasn't.  My hut blocks came out 8 inch finished instead of the needed 9 inch.  When I was sewing the huts, they didn't seem any different than the huts on the first quilt I made. But they were slightly smaller.  When I tried to sew the blocks together, they didn't match.  I decided was easier to add to the hut blocks to make them larger rather than re-making the diamond blocks smaller.   

All the paper pieced patterns I've used from other designers have always specified printing at 100% which I've done. And I checked the 1 inch mark too.  I've always wondered if it really matters.  And the answer is:  YES, it does!  When I went back and printed one of the hut patterns with the print setting at 100% and the block measured a perfect 9 inch finished.   Lesson learned. 

African Village with Diamonds Quilt Design

African Village Quilt--Completed.

Here's my completed African Village Quilt.  It measures 40 x 57 inches. 

African Village Quilt

I recently took Jacquie Gering's Craftsy course, "Creative Quilting with your Walking Foot."  She had some great tips and suggestions about using the walking foot for quilting.  I used echoing in, radiating designs and straight quilting using a variety of specialty stitches on my domestic sewing machine. It was lots of fun to use her techniques.  

The echoing in stitching is in the setting triangles in the upper strip of diamonds. 

Here is a detail of radiating quilting on a roof. 

Radiating quilting done with walking foot on the hut roof,  Free motion quilting used to create grasses and heat swirls. 

I used Jacquie's suggestion of using the Bernina specialty stitch #4, the serpentine stitch, to make the current in the river blocks. She said that this stitch is intended for use in garment construction making lingerie which needs to stretch!  Doesn't it make a lovely river current?

Bernina Stitch #4 to make the waves in the river blocks.  Free motion quilting to make the stream pebbles and swirls around the women.

I also used the serpentine stitch to make the smoke coming out of the chimney in the central hut. 

Central hut showing serpentine stitch for smoke.  Also note the straight stitching done on the focus fabric blocks adjacent to the block and on the hut walls.

There are also lots of straight stitching using the walking foot throughout the quilting. 

Straight stitching with the walking foot and 2 decorative stitches in the outer quilt border.

You'll also see free motion quilting on this quilt.  I used it to make heat currents, pebbles and grasses and other vegetation. 

This quilt was a lot of fun to make and to quilt.  

Note 2021: For those of you returning to the post, the free pattern no longer is available. I wrote it so long along that the files weren’t intact and no longer secure.

Thanks to everyone who did use the old pattern to make a quilt! I hope you enjoyed the process.