Quilt surgery

After piecing together some diamonds for a Lone Star quilt, I decided one of the fabrics was not working well.  Four small diamonds of this fabric were already in place, so it would take some surgery to replace them.  I wasn't thrilled about tackling this -- I was afraid it could go really badly -- but I felt I would not be happy with the quilt if I did not take this step.

The process would require exposing some bias edges, so I added some stay stitching along these edges before unpicking the seams.

The gray/aqua batik is the one to be replaced.  (I continued the stay stitching across this piece just to avoid some starts and stops.  And looking at this photo, I realize the stitches on the right should have extended up one more diamond.)

I also added stay stitches to the new fabric, before sub-cutting the strip.

After unpicking the seams, I was left with this hole:

I stitched in the new diamond, working in reverse order from how the seams were unpicked, so I attached the top and bottom edges first:

Then I sewed the side seams and removed the stay stitches:

It's not a perfect alignment, but it's no worse than the original.

The process was tedious, but not particularly difficult.  Here is the center with all four replacement diamonds in place:

I had begun work on some outer diamonds using the same "bad" fabric.  I ended up discarding one strip set and remaking it (since I had already sub-cut that strip set); for the few remaining strip sets I just had to replace the one strip.

I'm pleased with how the diamonds are looking now; I think this was a worthwhile step.

I'm linking up with Lee for WIP Wednesday.