Heart to Heart

I think I completed my last sewing for 2011 this morning. Although a few hours remain in the year, I've only got about 3 hours until friends come over for a New Years gathering, and somehow I don't think they'll be pleased if the entertainment is watch me sew. Call me crazy, but I put away the machine, cleaned up my sewing messes, and made a pinata. And baked and prepped some food.

But back to the pictures....for our December do Good Stitches quilt, Kelli asked us to make heart blocks. She gave us ample freedom, simply requesting heart-focused blocks made from reds, pinks, and whites and one more color. Technically she said use our favorite color, but I chose colors that I thought worked best with the fabrics and blocks.

Inspired by Sandi's list of paper-pieced hearts, I made the block on the right first. Hers were 6-inch templates, while I wanted a slightly larger heart, so I drafted my own based on her diagrams. I cut a standard piece of printer paper into an 8.5" square and then folded it every which way to have lots of angles to work with. Then I drew in the lines, stared at the template for a while, and finally labeled the piecing order. It's the first time I moved beyond a ready-made template for paper-piecing, and it provided some good mental exercise. The bias edges on some of the corners make it lay a little less flat than I would like, but I think it will be fine.

After paper-piecing, I wanted something simple. And I haven't made a square-in-square block in ages, so square-in-square it was. I transferred my elementary-school construction paper heart-cutting experiences to fabric, and made myself a swirly purple heart which I appliqued onto my pretty block. I'm slowly starting to see the fun in applique.

So there you have it, the last blocks of 2011. Except that I actually have three quilts to show you: two are making their way to their new owners and one needs to get photographed well. Obviously I can't do any sort of "year in quilts summary" without these ones included. Or maybe I can. To be determined. In 2012.