Scrappy Hearts

First off, I've been working on lots of quilts this year.  I've finished several tops recently. Finished a few whole quilts including backing and binding.  The stack above is all my finished quilts from the last several months.  They are all baby or lap sized.  These were the easy finishes.  Most of them can be found on my quilt gallery page.

This stack here, nestled in amongst all my office supplies, still needs finishing.  These are the bigger quilts.  Eleven in all.  In there is also my La Passacaglia that I finally finished this year (only took 6 years).  

One of the quilts I'm working on now is my scrappy hearts quilt.  I was intrigued by Youtube videos of "making your own fabric" with scraps.  I have so many scraps that my bins were spilling everywhere.  

The thing I find most curious with scraps is how slow they go down when you start working with them.  I've made loads of "fabric sheets" and still my scrap bins seem to be at the same level as when I started.  I just randomly sew together any and every bit of scraps, no rhyme or reason to it.  I love doing it when I need to destress and get my mind off of something.  

I'm using all low volume fabrics for the background.  I didn't want to make the whole quilt with heart blocks just because I was getting bored of making them so I decided to use low volume 9 patches in-between.  Who knows I may change my mind about these 9 patches but I do like the all over scrappiness and think it will look really cool once I get all the blocks together.  Buuutt looking at it through the photo it almost seems too much and detracts from the hearts.  We'll see where it goes.  

I'm making 21 heart blocks and the same number of 9 patches.  Each block is 12" finished.  The overall quilt should measure about 72" x 84".  I don't have any plans for it yet - just enjoying the process.

I'm debating if I should add some dark stitches to the edge of the heart like I did here.  Some of the blocks ended up having lighter fabrics on the edges so I thought this would help distinguish the edges a little better.  Or maybe doing the darker stitches on the outside of the heart instead once all the layers are together and I'm doing the final quilting.  Either way I feel like this quilt should have some pretty dense quilting.  This sort of sums up my quilting process...start with and idea, work on it, ponder it, work on it, change it, decide to live with it,  eventually we get there.

Mini Quilt Made with My Own Dyed Fabric

This project was from a few years ago.  I was dabbling in fabric dying after taking a silk dying class from the Hill Institute in Northampton, MA.  It was a lovely class and I made several scarves.  (Enough to give one as a Christmas gift to everyone I know.)  I took it with my mother and I loved spending time doing something creative together.  The process was much simpler than I expected.  Isn't that the case with so many things?  We don't do something thinking it's just too hard but when we make up our minds to do it and just do it, we find that breaking it down into steps, it's really not as we thought.  

During this class we wanted to have some dyes to work with at home so we purchased several from dharmatrading.com.  When you are dying on a very small scale as we were the jars of powered dye will last a long time.  All of which I still have and pull out from time to time.  Not sure if they ever go bad but so far they still work.  

As something fun to do one summer day I cut up some pieces of fabric and my kids and I set to dying them any which way.  Ha! I love that we were dying fabric wearing a tye-dyed shirt!

In this photo I had just painted the dye on.  I had it laid out on a piece of plastic.  You can see some of the air bubbles. 

Here shows what it looks like after washing and drying.  Those air bubbles created a really cool technique.  

Above is another before and after.

This one looks saturated with too much color and I thought I would hate it but once it was washed it lightened up just enough.  I ended up using this whole piece in my final project; you can see it all around the outer edges of my quilt.

I see electricity on this one.  

These colors are so bold!

I was using so many different folding techniques.  I think this piece was folded in half then accordion folded with a rubber band in the middle.  Those fingers/pickles are about 1" wide.

And this was folded into squares as you can tell by the square outlines.  This is a more traditional shabori technique.  Creamsicle! 😋 

I started with choosing my favorite fabric and cut it into squares.

Then decided to do the 4 at a time method for half square triangles.  

I love how with any intention on my part it created either warm or cool blocks.

After a lot of time playing around with the blocks this is the layout I came up with.  It was a pretty small quilt about 18" x 18".  

Butterfly Mini Quilt

 

Another WIP finish!  This was one of my slow summer stitching projects I started on my vacation.  Being a mini-quilt I thought it would be an easy finish but that didn't happen.

I sat in my little rocking chair staring out at the ocean.  This is my favorite time of the year.  Unplugged from everything except for family, a good book and some hand-sewing.

I found the template for the butterfly from the Vintage Sewing Box.  The butteries are paper pieced and so tiny.  

I really wanted to do something that used only 30's prints but wanted it relatively simple.  I always love a 9 patch and this let me use many of my favorite fabrics.

This entire project was hand-stitched, which is a good reason why I am just now finishing it...6 months later.

The entire quilt measures just 12" x 12".  This is before washing....

...And this is after washing.  I don't know what I am going to do with it yet.  Hold on to it for now and maybe hang it up once we get a little close to spring.  

Heart Table Runner

Heart table runner....finished just in time to use on Valentine's Day - well for the last half of the day.   

I was inspired by this hearts and gizzards block tutorial.  

It's been a long time since I've actually quilted something...as indicated by my stack of finished quilt tops I've made (not shown because I'm too lazy to pull them all out).  Actually I think I will pull some of those out and start working on them...then I'll share.

Since it's been so long some of the curves are a little wonky but I'm ok with that.

Once this is washed those edges around the hearts should get all frayed up.

I've had the backing fabric since the days when the chevron fad was at it's peak way back in 2013ish.  The pinks don't match but I think it works good for this project. 

I thought about the fact that my feathers might be cut off by the binding if I put them too close to the edge and still I quilted over a little too far. 

Inspired by THIS, I've started "signing" all my work.  I feel like I need something a little more recognizable so I might end up doing more of my full name.  I also plan on pulling out all of the quilts and things I've sewn and "signing" them.