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Quilting Plans for Diatom by Quilting Jet Girl

HollyAnne Knight

In early 2023, Yvonne at Quilting Jet Girl hosted an amazing quilt along for her Diatom Pattern. This stunning quilt has options for both straight and curved piecing, and the possibilities for different quilt plans for the Diatom quilt are endless! Let’s look at a few drawings to help you feel inspired to finish your Diatom quilt!

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The Diatom quilt is made up of many different star-like blocks. Yvonne (@quiltingjetgirl) shares: “Diatoms are unicellular organisms and they are either solitary cells or colonies. Diatom colonies can take the shape of ribbons, fans, zigzags, or stars. Living diatoms make up a significant portion of the Earth’s biomass and they generate a large percentage of the oxygen produced on the planet each year. The Diatom quilt is a collection (or colony, if you will) of star blocks.”

As there are so many different blocks in this quilt, it lends itself to more custom quilting. That being said, if you want to use an all over design or pantograph on your quilt to keep the quilting simple over your amazing piecing. But if you want a more custom effect, you’ll definitely want a quilting plan!

(Many thanks to Yvonne for these mockups with the Broderi fabric from Dashwood)

What’s a Quilting Plan?

A quilting plan (as outlined in detail here) is a road map to help you decide what to quilt where before you start quilting your precious quilt. It is most often drawn on paper or drawn digitally. This allows you experiment with different ideas without quilting and unpicking.

When making a quilting plan, I like to consider a number of things including:

  • what I’ll be doing with the final quilt

  • the scale of the blocks

  • how much time & effort I’m willing to put into the quilting

  • a healthy contrast between geometric and organic designs

Quilting Plans

As mentioned above, there are lots of ways to customize the Diatom quilt and just as many to customize your quilting plan. I’ve sketched out two quilting plan ideas each for three different possible layouts of the quilt

On the left, we have a pretty straightforward plan: ruler or walking foot straight lines through the center of the star blocks, stitch in the ditch around the stars, and a meander in the background. This plan is perfect if you want a variety of textures without extra complexity in the quilting process.

On the right, a combination of ruler work (both straight line and continuous curves) and free motion quilting (switchbacks and feather rosettes) add greater complexity and create secondary designs in the background blocks.

The quilting plan on the left here is similar to the one above— grid-work plus background. Here, though, the grid goes across the whole block to better accommodate different inner stars, and a swirl (or other more complex motif) fills in the background.

On the right, this design is very custom. The center of each block features a feather rosette, surrounded by switchbacks. the edges of each block interior is accented by continuous curves. The stars have rulerwork points, and paisleys (or similar) fill the background.

The postage stamp setting of Diatom adds even more possibility.

On the left, rulerwork or walking foot lines square off each section creating a customizable all over design. I’ve alternated rows of switchbacks and feather rosettes across for amazing texture contrast

On the right, we’re approaching full heirloom texture. Additional quilted curves add an amazing amount of pizazz (especially with the wishbones) while switchbacks and simple loops accentuate the center of the blocks

Depending on how you customized your quilt setting, you may need to make additional customization to your quilting plan. I hope, though, that these ideas may spark your own excitement or inspiration as you finish your Diatom Quilt!

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