Sweet Hearts

It's Valentine's Day, the perfect opportunity to share a pretty little heart-themed quilt in the making.

This is one of my sister Betty's creations, begun about six months ago for one of her two nieces and steadily worked from concept to quilt.

Each hand-pieced block is 4.5" in size and separated from it's neighbours by a narrow white sashing, which, like the pinks, are very scrappy. The hearts in each row are staggered against the adjoining rows. LUV.

She's made about 400 blocks in total but will likely use only 330.

The extra blocks were going to be worked into a border pattern I believe, but she's reimagining that idea so we'll wait and see what the final design becomes. So sweet.

Happy Valentine's Day!....M

Pawsitively Lovely

Big, Big Paws is pretty much made up of four very large nine-patch blocks so assembly went really well.

Because I had those 16 large HSTs to make, and lots of the grey remnants, it was just as easy to make two HSTs at the same time so I decided to make two flimsies. No point having a pile of remnant 6.5" HSTs lying around wondering what else I could do with them. It also gave me a helpful visual reference so that I didn't mess up the order that the blocks were to be sewn together.

My borders are slightly bigger than those on the inspiration quilt because I wanted to get the quilts to be 48" x 64" to meet the size that Quilts for Survivors prefers. The edges are 6" finished and I believe that the top and bottom borders are about 12" wide.

It took a little doing because I discovered several random marks/stains on the sheets that I wasn't able to discern what they were - wax? oil? Regardless, it meant figuring out how best to cut so that I got the most out of the fabric while still avoiding the stains, but I did it.

The little blossom at the centre of the paws was a fun addition.

These are happy quilts and I hope that whoever they are gifted to enjoys them as much as I enjoyed making them....M

Big Bear's Closeup

The longest part of the giant Bear Paw process was finding the right combination of fabrics for each quadrant, but I finally got there. Because the lighting downstairs is hit and miss, I thought I'd share closeups of each 'paw' so that you can get a better sense of just how diverse the fabric selection is. You can get even better closeups if you click on each image.

Nice bright spring greens on this cold, cold winter's day.

Orange and yellow, heading towards tan at times.

This one is still showing up a little muddy but they are all actually quite bright. I love the combo.

And last but not least, teal and blue, with a little red surprise. That's an idea that I totally stole from the designer Giuseppe Ribaudo, AKA Giucy Giuce, and I love it. That little bit of quirkiness keeps everything interesting. I've tried to find a name for the pattern but haven't had any luck so I'm sticking with Big, Big Paws....M

Big, Big Paws

I've been working on a quilt that is sort of counter intuitive for me, but I have to say that I'm really enjoying it. No itty, bitty 1" strips or squares in this one. This time it's 6" squares and HSTs. And...more grey.

Just after I mentioned that I tend not to use grey that often, I ran across a photo of a Bear Paw quilt that's been on my radar for quite some time - grey with a terrific collections of brights that often read as solids and the odd funky large print.

It was a little scant on details initially...

but as more colours filled in you could see it starting to build.

Eventually, despite the not so great lighting in the sewing cave, you can see that it has started to really come together....M