Scrappy Little Heart Quilt Block Tutorial

Ah, Valentine's Day.  The season of hearts and flowers and pink and red.  Today I bring to you a tutorial for making this tiny little heart block.  It's a great way to use up some pretty scraps.  And don't think you have to use all pinks and reds and purples.  I bet this would look good in any combination of colors.  If you look really close, you can see that I even used two different whites (Kona White and Bella Solids Bleached White) for the background.  Scrap-bustin' over here.

This block measures only 4.5" square.  Why so small?  Well because I happened to have made up a bunch of pink and purple butterfly blocks from Lori Holt's book Quilty Fun, and they measure 4.5".  And then I didn't even use the heart blocks with the butterfly blocks.  After I made them, I HAD to turn them into a Valentine's Day pillow.  But at least now you know why I made such small blocks.  Onto the instructions!

For EACH block, you'll need:
(2) 2.5" x 4.5" heart fabrics
(4) 1.5" squares background fabric
(2) 2.5" squares background fabric

It's important to use a scant 1/4" seam here.  There's not much room for trimming and squaring up.  A scant seam will help with that.

Draw a line from point to point on the wrong side your background squares (the 2.5" squares too).

Position a 1.5" square of background fabric right sides together (RST) with the top left corner of your 2.5" x 4.5" heart fabric pieces.  Note the direction of the line you drew.  

Stitch on the line you drew.  If you are making a lot of heart blocks, I find it helpful to chain piece here.  Trim a 1/4" inch from your stitched line.

Press your background fabric open.  Position your other 1.5" squares of background fabric as shown on the top right corner of your heart fabric pieces.  Note the direction of the drawn line.

Stitch on the drawn line (again, chain piecing if necessary).  Trim 1/4" away from your stitched line.  Press the background fabric open.  You should now have something that looks like a really tall flying geese unit.

Place your 2.5" background squares RST on the bottom of your heart fabric unit.  Not the direction of the drawn lines.  You'll want them going in opposite directions.

Stitch on the drawn line (chain piece here as well).  Trim a 1/4" away from the stitched line.

Press the background fabric open.  You now have two halves of a heart.

Place the two halves RST and sew down the side.  Press open.

Trim it up if necessary.  Now you have a super cute little heart!

I made seven hearts and turned them into a pillow.  What will you use your hearts for?  I'd love to see pics, please link in the comments if you make them!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Merry & Bright Pillows

 

Here are a couple of pillows I made to decorate our home with for Christmas this year.

 

If you follow me on Instagram, it's likely you've seen me working on them.  I post so much more there these days.  It's not that I don't enjoy posting here, but it's just so much faster and easier (and the pictures don't have to be as nice - thank you filters! haha).

 

I got the idea for these after seeing Tessa's tutorial for her Noel Patchwork Pillow.  Great inspiration over there on The Sewing Chick!  I didn't follow her tutorial, but I wanted to give her credit for the inspiration.  The patchwork border is mostly 2.5" squares, except the solid red bits on each side which are 2.5" x 3.5".  Every bit of fabric, fusible web (for the applique) and batting used for both of these pillows were scraps and not cut from stash.  Even the fabric I used to back the pillow tops for quilting was something I was just going to get rid of (an old scratchy print from Joann).  That makes me so happy!

 

I quilted them using my walking foot, every two inches at a 45 degree angle, both ways.  I really like this sort of quilting for smaller projects that I want done ASAP.  I timed myself on one of them and I had it basted, marked, quilted, and squared up in about 30 minutes.  Not bad at all!

 

These pillows are an interesting size - roughly 11" by 19".  I made them from some seen-better-days throw pillows we've had forever and were all floppy and flat.  I made the covers smaller so I could stuff the inserts in to make them as full as possible.

I may not have a fantastic Christmas quilt to show off this year (one day!), but for now, I'm super happy with our little Merry & Bright pillows.  Merry Christmas, y'all!

PS - Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a fat quarter of Tule from Stitcherie!  Comments on that post close tomorrow, so get your entry in now.  

Quilted Tule Pillow

Thanksgiving is coming up here in the United States.  I thought it was a perfect time to make a thank you gift for a very nice friend who has helped me out lately.  I asked another friend of hers to give me some feedback on what fabrics she liked, and Leah Duncan came up.  I chose these lovely Tule prints and set on my way.

I used Jeni Baker's Arithmetic quilt pattern here.  I love simple patchwork, and I love that Jeni has taken squares up a notch by providing a grid for aligning them in a cascading plus sign pattern.  That pattern was super easy to follow and took out all the guess work.  I quilted the pillow top in dense straight lines for texture.

The back is more Tule, with an envelope style closure.  I am not the biggest fan of florals, but this is one floral print I can really get behind.  Leah Duncan just does them so well, and this navy print is one of my favorites.  

The pillow cover measures 18 inches square.  I wanted it to be more "stuffed" so I used a 20 inch pillow insert.  But, funny story, this is one of the Granat inserts from Ikea.  Which apparently is not actually 20 inches.  Should have measured the insert I guess!  So the cover still fits, but it's not as full as I wanted.  I am just glad I didn't make the cover 20 inches.  I have used these inserts quite a few times an have never experienced this problem, so I am thinking maybe they changed them?  Oh well!

I hope my friend likes it.  I really am grateful for her help and kindness!

Modern Mini Challenge at Ellison Lane and PTS 10 pillow

If you're joining me from the Modern Mini Challenge linky at Ellison Lane, welcome!

This is sort of like a two-for-one post.  I was planning to post about the pillow I made for my partner for PTS 10 (Jess at The Elven Garden) anyways, and I wanted to enter it in Jennifer's Mini Challenge, so here it is!

My PTS 10 partner's mosaic was full of lots of saturated color and paper piecing.  I knew right away that I was going to do a more complicated paper piecing block if I wanted to really impress.  I started looking around and eventually came across the Evan's Star block from Quilter's Cache.

To start, I made a mock-up to play with the color palette I intended to use (Chicopee and natural linen):

Then I got busy making the quadrants of each block:

This pillow would need 4 blocks to be a good size, and each block had 4 sections of paper piecing, to that was 16 quadrants.  To achieve the look I was going for, I had to pay close attention to the layout of the different prints within each color group.  There were a few mishaps, but nothing a seam ripper couldn't handle.

I love the look of a back-lit block.  Kind of reminds me of stained glass.  This is one block, or four of the above quadrants pieced together.

Here's the completed pillow top, after joining all 16 quadrants together in the correct pattern.  Notice the differences in this and the mock-up.  I omitted the pink-ish border.  Jess stated many times in comments on lots of the other pillows that she's not a fan of pink, so I didn't want to add any more in than necessary.  I also changed up the layout to make sure there wasn't too much pink saturated in the main parts of the pillow and instead broke it up to mostly fall along the perimeter.

The next part was deciding how to quilt it.  I intended to do some great echo quilting around the secondary X pattern (made by the aqua and chartreuse colors).  But after doing so, it just looked so busy.  Again, I made friends with the seam ripper.  Then I tried the same echo idea around the stars, with the same busy result.  Finally I decided to echo the tertiary polygram shape (sort of octagonal?) made by the stars.  That worked out wonderfully!  Not too busy, but still complimented the piecing nicely.

The quilting doesn't show up well in photos, but perhaps if you squint...

The backing is more scrappy Chicopee, including an under-the-flap zipper closure.

Here it is soaking up the sun before beginning its journey Down Under!

Pillow Stats

Size: 18" x 18"

Pattern: Evan's Star by Marcia Hohn/The Quilter's Cache

Fabric: Chicopee by Denyse Schmidt and Essex Linen in Natural

Patchwork Heart Pillow

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!  Today I have an actual finish to share.  It's a reverse applique pillow from the Pretty in Patchwork: Holidays book.

I actually didn't use the heart template in the book (not even sure if there is one, to be honest, I didn't look).  I free handed the heart onto some freezer paper and traced it on.

I love this doodly stitching.  It took a lot for me not to also hand stitch with some chunky perle cotton.  I wanted to so bad because I love that look, but I didn't want to take away from the delicate doodly outline.

 My quilting isn't perfect and all my points don't line up, but I've decided to be okay with that.  It's still pretty!

This guy and his truck decided to make a cameo during the photoshoot...

Sadface.  Toddlers....what are you gonna do, right?

Have a LOVELY day!  xoxoxo