I remember in business school years ago one of the phrases we were taught about was called “acres of diamonds”.  The phrase was created by Russell Conwell in the 1800’s and it meaning was each person can find their own “acres of diamonds” in their own back yard.  Close to where they live, work, have relationships. The idea is that many of us look outside for success instead of within ourselves. If I won the lottery I would….  If I get promoted at work I plan to….  Once the kids are out of the house we are going to…  You get the idea. But our own personal wealth, while not always in dollars, surround each of us. I’ve been growing a plant and it has a tiny bloom now – quite a feat for someone who does not have a green thumb. I have 2 little dogs who think I am the greatest thing since sliced bread. I could go on and on but you get the idea.

A friend of ours passed away earlier this summer.  I told his wife in the next few days that if she wanted, I would make her a quilt from his shirts – if she didn’t, no worries but if she did to gather them when she was emotionally ready to tackle that.  She contacted me a couple of weeks ago; she had cleaned out his closet. We go to the same church, which is how I met her, and so she gave me a big bag of his shirts; each neatly folded.  She had told me early on that since he retired, he wore jerseys nearly all the time so I knew I would need to stabilize the fabric.

In the meantime, I showed her 9 or 10 different designs that I’d created in EQ7 and the one that caught her eye was made up of diamonds. It struck me today that really fits her character, because if I could choose one word to describe her it would be content. She always has a gentle smile and a nice word to say.  Her life has acres of diamonds.  I brought them home and dissected most of the shirts and today I got around to buying the contrasting fabric today and the interfacing and spent some time cutting out the diamonds. I knew my Accuquilt triangle die needed rectangles that were 6″x9.5″ inches so I cut the interfacing to that length as well as 6×20″ and realized pretty quickly that I could fit 2 enough interfacing on one side of each shirt to cut 7 diamonds from. With 1 from each sleeve, I can get 16 diamonds from each shirt.

Cutting the strips was fast; cutting the diamonds was even faster because I can cut 10 layers at a time so I just stacked them.  What is taking a while is actually ironing the interfacing because I need to iron each area for 10-15 seconds before moving to the next space. I have 2 irons so I used them both!  I’ll be cutting a lot more diamonds tomorrow and maybe by the end of the weekend I’ll be sewing them together.  The layout above is just an estimation – I really was just trying to figure out how much fabric and interfacing I needed but it’s a general idea of what it will look like.

Monday is the grand opening of my little business so I’ll try to remember to make a post about that then!