Giant Pink Heart Quilt

I can finally share this quilt because it was received yesterday. I have been email pen pals with a young woman who is a wife and mother of young children, for about 3 months now. I won't tell you much other than to say she has a lot of stuff going on in her life and I felt compelled to do something for her, so what does a quilter do? Makes a quilt 😄! But rather than just send her a quilt, I got the idea to fill the box full of other sewing/quilting tools, patterns, fabric, handmade bags an baskets, etc. My friend, Julie gave me some things to help put in the box too. She was touched and loved the quilt (I am so happy about that) and all the other things too. So it made my day to help brighten her day! I let Julie know and she was pleased too.

She loves the color pink and I had seen this quilt online and wanted to make it, but I didn't have any larger floral prints like Kaffe Fasset designs, so I chose batik fabrics as I do have batiks. The look is a little different in batik fabrics. I had seen photos of several colorways of this quilt made and each colorway gave it a different look. I only saw kits sold and I wanted to use fabrics I had and not buy a kit. It was easy enough to make since it is squares and rectangles that make up the pinwheel-looking blocks. I just decided on the size square and went from there. It came out pretty large, 65" wide x 70" high. 

My Favorite Quilt Store sells the kits in a variety of colorways. Tickled Pink was one colorway that you can see here. If you scroll down in the link above, you will see other colorways and if you then use the right arrow to click on, you will see even more colorways. See how different the colors can change the look of this quilt? I do love Kaffe fabrics. Better use up what I have first before I go buying any more fabric though!

I called this Giant Pink Heart Quilt as I didn't know what else to name it😂! When my daughter was a little girl she named her stuff bear, Baby Bear. She had another bear she called Brown Bear. One doll was Big Doll, while her baby doll was, Baby Doll. Such original names! Ha!

Serpentine quilting stitch.

I used soft flannel for the back and used 2 flannel colors as I didn't have enough of either color that was large enough,

I quilted it trying to follow the direction of the  heart shape.

I need to start making a few more quilts to put into the gift shop as all the larger ones sold! I have 2 small wall dog quilts in the shop, but they are about placemat size. Funny how I couldn't sell the larger quilts years ago, only the small wall quilts. Now it has shifted to where the larger baby/lap size ones are selling. Who knows why? The good thing about making those larger quilts is that I can donate what doesn't sell. If those dogs don't sell, I might just sew them onto a quilt!

Happy quilt making or quilt snuggling! Hugs to you Samantha!!!

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Lucky Stars Lap Quilt

I recently finished this quilt, called "Lucky Stars" (Atkinson Designs pattern). I had long admired this quilt pattern as I loved the bright colors and the stars. 

Since I have triangle die cuts, I thought I would just make things easier and cut the triangles with die cuts for the Sawtooth Stars. So that's what I did. I sewed one block first and then was going to add the rectangle blocks around the star and that's when I saw something wasn't right! The rectangle blocks were too large! Hmmm... so I looked closer at the pattern and I discovered that the background fabric was larger than a Sawtooth Star Block. See my quilt below (my star points touch the rectangles) and then see the cover photo on the pattern cover below and how much more background fabric there is and the star points don't touch, but look more suspended on the background fabric. Pays to READ the directions!

Photo from Atkinson Designs

So, since I cut all those triangles with my die cuts, I just cut my rectangle strips smaller to fit my version of the quilt. My quilt ended up a bit smaller than the lap size of 60" x 75" as the pattern says a lap quilt is supposed to be. Well trying to save myself some time and make it easier, I ended up with a slightly different quilt, but I like it anyhow. It's such a slight variation, that no one would have even noticed if I hadn't mentioned it.

Quilted the quilt with a variegated thread, using a serpentine stitch.

The backing is a flannel with a piece of orange Fossil Fern flannel added to make it wide enough.

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Prickly Pear Quilt

I made the blocks for this Prickly Pear quilt (pattern by Karen Stone) at least 12 years ago I think. Then they sat for years. A couple years ago I sewed the blocks together with the aqua triangles and it sat again. Well finally a couple of months ago I quilted it and now it is hanging in our bedroom. I don't know why it took me so long to finish.

These are positive, negative like blocks where you fuse the applique shapes and cut out each color and then mix up the colors onto the background squares . The background squares are black and purple. All the applique is batik fabric and the aqua triangles too.

The applique pieces here and below are different cut out shapes to give the same pattern in a positive and negative. It was a fun pattern, but a lot of blanket stitching!

I quilted free form flowers and swirls in the aqua sections.

I could only find a website for Karen Stone that is coming soon it says, but her email is there if you want to contact her and a link to buy her books too.
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