Patchwork Hearts — Finished!

No. 9 of my Finish Along List for Q2 is finished!

I started Patchwork Hearts simply for the fun of joining the Sew Along. So I challenged myself to use fabrics I had on hand. I had quite a bit of leftovers from my All the Diagonals project – which still isn’t finished – and I substituted with other blues from stash. As the background is already a jumble of colors, I decided to go for one fabric in the hearts. Luckily I had a big enough cut of this low volume ;)

The sewing itself went fairly fast and was fun. Easy block construction and lots of chain piecing included… Then I mixed and matched till I liked the distribution and went with sewing together the units into blocks and finally the quilt top.

I had no fitting fabric big enough to be a backing and so I decided to use up more of the still remaining scraps. First there were those extra HSTs from the big snowballed corners. And then I had a lot of wonky HRT shapes left from the “All the Diagonals” FPP piecing. I sewed those together into one huge improv section and last added other big strips/leftovers to fill it up to size. The only fabric not included in the top is the strip on the far right. The backing was still not large enough and the color fit so, why not?

I just love the look of the orange peel on the improv design. Maybe even better than on the grid?

My mom says she likes the back better than the front. I think they are not easily compared but I do agree that it is a phenomenal back… if I dare say so myself ;)

The quilting is an organic orange peel. I had seen it done before by Debbie @ A Quilter’s Table and loved the effect. Though I was always a bit afraid. But the automatic grid by the block units made this the perfect project to finally try it out :)

And actually the curves were still fairly smooth and easy enough to do with the size in this block. I am sure I will try it again with a slightly smaller square someday.

The quilting thread is my go-to DMC quilting cotton. But in this case instead of white I used two different shades of blue. One more neutral light blue and a medium dark turquoise to teal color. I randomly picked lines to sew in one color first and then added in the remaining ones in the second choice. When you put the spools right beside each other, the colors look very differently, but in the overall quilt design on the blue background it is just a subtle difference – that I love! I think you can see it best in the white of the hearts.

And as with everything in the quilt the binding is also scrappy and done from leftovers.

As usual for all the progress pictures and all the information including details of the quilt cost calculations see the post in the gallery.

Now to find a baby who needs a quilt or maybe sell it…

Anyway I will enjoy my one and only finish from the FAL list from last quarter. And yes, even though it is the 2nd of July already, I will count this as finished in Q2. It is now blogged about – before I publish the new FAL list – and so it sounds strange to just put it on there for the technicality. But that might also just be my huge wish to reduce the list talking ;)

Best wishes
xo Melanie

So far this quarter …

Linking up at
Patchwork & Quilts #110
Beauties Pageant 179 @ From Bolt To Beauty