Celebration Of Life: Donna Jordan - Drop Diamonds!

Hi, I'm Donna Jordan from Jordan Fabrics. Today I'd like to show you how to make a quilt called Drop Diamonds. Now the pattern calls for strips. It calls for two and a half inch strips, but it also says you can use quarter yard cuts and I opened up the pattern. You can not only use quarter yard cuts, you can use fat quarters. So that's what I'm going to use today. This is a fat quarter bundle called Scarlet Days and Nights. It's from Henry Gloss and I think we've got a variety of colors in here. Really nice black and red, floral and it looks to me like we've got some that are clearly dark. These are all the darker ones and then we've got some that are clearly light. I'm going to separate out the darker ones because I think that's what I'm going to use for the quilt. Let's count how many darker ones we've got here. These would all be considered dark and I think we've got 12 or 16. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and I think we can use, let's see, we might be able to use that as a dark. So it looks like we've got 12 here even though that's got quite a bit of light. I think we can mix it in and 12 quarter yards or fat quarters, that's what we need for the twin. So that's what I'm going to make with these colors. The other things we need, we need a background and I'm going to use white because most of my prints were dark and we need an accent and I'm going to use this grunge and it's red but it's got a little bit of dark shading on it and I think that will look really good for the diamonds. The first step is to take all of the fat quarters and cut them up into two and a half inch strips. So I'm going to go ahead and do that with all my fat quarters and I think I will cut about four at a time. Some people like to cut six or eight layers, some people like to cut one, so just cut whatever you're comfortable with. Okay we've got all our pieces cut and the first step we're going to do with the sewing is we're going to make a strip set. We're going to make a strip set with six of these. So I'm just going to try to put them in a random order. I'm going to pick out six different ones and I'm going to avoid using this lightest one as much as possible. I might not have to use it at all, we might have enough to just skip that guy because I think the blocks will look better without that real light one. So I'm just going to pick six different ones here and I'm going to sew them side by side. All I'm going to do is pick these up in order, line them up. If you like you could pin the top and the bottom, you just want to make sure that you don't stretch either one as you sew. So I will usually sew a little bit and then grab it all the way here at the bottom so nothing is stretched and hold that way down here and then straighten up as I go. Then I'm going to finger press the seams all going one way. So I'm just going to press this one like this. I'm going to anchor it there and just hold it with the palms of my thumbs there and then stretch my finger right down there and it opens up the seam and it makes it real flat so when we get the ironing board it'll be nice and easy to iron. Even though I finger press it I'm going to smooth it out here and then take my iron. I can feel if the seams are all going the same way. I like to use a dry iron first and then when it's nice and flat we'll add some steam. Next we're going to sub cut this. Every strip set is going to get cut exactly the same way so we're going to cut one bigger section and one smaller section and these will stay together and we'll use those in one of our blocks. The next step is to draw some diagonal lines on our background and on our squares of our accent. So on the squares we're just going to draw one diagonal line from corner to corner and I'm just using a pencil there and that will work on this color as well. And then on these bigger segments we need to do half with a diagonal line going here and half with a diagonal line going the other way. Same thing with the taller ones. So I have several methods I use to get this done. You can put this on your cutting board so that corner is on one of the diagonal lines. Line it up here and then just put your ruler right on that line and draw this one like that and then we'll just for the other one you can turn it you can put it on a diagonal line going over here that's probably the easiest way and then you'll know you'll have them as mirror images. So we're just going to draw a diagonal line there. Here's something I do to save time. I'm going to line this one up on the corner there and I'm going to line this one up it's still on the corner and then this one it's still on the corner. You can get four or five done all at once here and you can just draw one line so that'll save a lot of time instead of picking each piece up individually. I'm going to work with these three pieces so the first step is to take this guy and put it on top of the accent there and the pattern will show you exactly which way which pieces to pick up and we're just going to stitch right along that line that we drew and we're going to press this seam toward the red. So right now I'm just going to finger press that and I'm going to trim off the excess. When I make the whole quilt I will sew these in bulk and I will use the iron and then trim this off but this will work fine for one block. Now we're going to take this piece and it's going to go right here line everything up and stitch again right along that line you drew it makes it really easy and we're going to press this seam toward the white and that way we're going to reduce our bulk a little bit in this intersection here so we'll trim this off and to make the second part of this block it's just going to be a mirror image so we're going to grab the pieces that were just going the opposite way and make one that's facing just like a mirror of that so this one now because it's a mirror that's going to make our nice diamond and we're going to put them right sides together and stitch along here and the seam allowances are pressed different directions so that it's very easy to match and to get it to lay flat and the pattern gives you all that information so that you won't have any trouble getting these lined up and nice and flat there so I'm going to go ahead and get the rest of these all finished up the next step is to take one of our pairs here and this is going to go right in the middle here so we're going to sew these together and we're going to do that with all of our blocks all of our center piece here I'm just going to give this a quick finger press and then the very last step is to add some of these accents in the corners so the red corner is going to go here and the white corner is going to go here every block is done the same so be sure to check the pattern before you stitch these on because it's pretty easy to get them in the wrong corners I've already done that once today no harm got it all fixed up so these get ironed toward the corner and then we'll do the same thing with the red one and then we'll finish up all the blocks and we'll be ready to lay the quilt out the blocks are all done and we're ready to lay out the quilt I've got 24 blocks so we're so we're going to twist them and turn them a little and you'll see that when we do that we are going to get some diamonds where all these things meet so these are going to meet and these are going to meet so not only do we have the diamonds here we've got diamonds coming together here and we're going to have diamonds coming together here there I happen to even look to see if any of the colors match up to trade blocks like I might trade here I might not it actually looks pretty good just as it is but if you see something popping out that's too much of one color in one spot like maybe that red you can trade blocks around so I'm going to get the rest of it's going to be really easy to do all I have to do is sew these blocks together and they're nice and big add the borders then I can get it loaded onto the quilting machine hi everyone I'm Matt Jordan and this video will end right here we James was never able to put together an ending for it because unfortunately on March 14th at about 4 a.m in the morning Donna had passed away Donna has been battling an illness for for a few years now and the last three months it got more acute and and she needed more treatments when I met Donna I was 16 years old and she was 16 years old and she was already making quilts and I'm I'm 67 now so I don't know how long that is I can't count that high but she she's been making quilts the whole time and we've been basically working on our craft of fabric and quilting and quilts for about 50 years I just want to tell you that Donna loved what she did she she couldn't believe that she could make money cutting quilts making quilts and teaching people how to do them it was such a blessing to her and I hope a blessing to you all we just will miss her greatly here and she was a great for me she was a great wife a great business partner a great mother in fact I want to show you a picture if I can just follow me right now through the years it's been a family business and all the kids have worked in the business at one time or another but I want to show you just a little picture to give you an idea here this is my office it's messy I haven't been cleaning it up in a while but this is it my this is my daughter Michelle at her wedding a few years ago of course Donna this is my son James who does all the videos quite quite amazing what he's accomplished all my kids are actually very accomplished this is Monica she she has a few kids and this is my son Peter he's married Idaho I'm just so proud as a father grateful to have such a wonderful family and and Donna and I were so grateful to have such a wonderful audience the future of Jordan fabrics just so you know we we are going to continue we will continue to bring of all kinds and and and we are looking forward to that in the meantime we will just honor Donna for the person she was and excuse me and I'm just so happy and blessed honestly to have her be a part of my life and and and I hope you all enjoyed her in your life also thank you for watching the video and we look forward to seeing you soon