Here's a photo of three diamonds from my diamond log cabin. When I discovered the free Moda pattern, I made up a sample block and discovered I disliked the size of the finished diamond -- way too big. I also didn't like the larger center diamond. It seemed to dominate the block. You can see that by reducing the size of the inner diamond to the same width as the strips, it makes the diamond a little more petite and more log-cabin feeling. (I really love this pattern now.) The fabric is the Moda Allspice Tapestry line and it's lovely. The quilt will be set up alternating diamonds with dark and light outer strips.
I discovered very early that the strips are stretchy and you can make major variations in diamond size with pretty small errors. I drafted a finished size diamond and used it to cut patterns for each segment of the diamond. My strip sets are sorted for each block. As I start a new block, I trim the strips to length using the paper patterns. This would be a great rotary cutter template set idea! I have to lay the paper pattern on the strip, align my small ruler on the edge of the paper, and then trim. Kind of slows you down.
