The diamonds within the 9 patch diamond are 1" finished. The degree of the diamond is 60 deg. I machine pieced everything. I made all the 9 patch diamonds in light, med & darks & then assembled the 9 patch diamonds into the 7 tumbling blocks. After I had all 7 tumbling blocks sewn together, then I pieced the surrounding diamonds in sections & finished by piecing the dark blue borders. I would do it differently if I was to attempt it again. I would try strip piecing I think. I'll wait awhile before attempting another one. LOL
Good Luck with yours! I'm sure tumbling block patterns have been done by hand successfully by others. My hands just wouldn't want to cooperate with me if I tried doing them by hand. I hope you'll share your work when you're done. :D