Dreaming of Candy Hearts

February, I think of candy hearts. For years, I have wanted to make a quilt with hearts for the month of February. 

This year, I made it happen.

I started at the beginning of the month by cutting out my hearts from 5 inch batik squares that I got from Missouri Quilt Co in mid January. At first, I wanted to use a printed pattern with vintage, Valentine motif that Missouri Quilt Co was selling, but I was too late on that deal. The remaining fabrics came from Joann Fabrics since there was an awesome sale on fabrics. I cut 10 inch squares for front and back fabrics. 

This quilt is another quilt-as-you-go quilt since I wanted to use up remnant batting and also make it easier quilting. Much easier to quilt a 10" block with curves through the machine than maneuver an entire quilt.

So, I got busy zigzagging batting pieces to together for the 10 squares to be quilted.

Next, came centering the hearts and machine stitching the hearts down onto the tops, white 10" squares.

Hearts were arranged, numbered (36), and placed with back squares that also had been arranged. 

Squares were then sandwiched (top, batting, back) and quilted with my Davis Feed walking foot machine. I love that machine! 

Threads were knotted and then sewn under, between top fabric and batting. 

Stashing strips were cut, top 2" (little red hearts) and bottom 1.5" (white). I assembled the blocks with the back stashing first. I tried something different for the assembling of the quilt-as-you-go blocks on this quilt. 

After a row was formed, I then stitched down the top stashings. 

I decided to bind the quilt with the flange binding technique of stitching in the ditch. 

Most of the binding is purple with a little corner of red. The flange portion is mainly pink with just a little bit of orange.

My mom loved the "red hots", cinnamon red hearts. She would buy them every Valentine's Day instead of the candy hearts with the little messages. This quilt has both, minus the messages--those are for one to dream about.

Kaleidoscope Quilt

 A kaleidoscope quilt has been on my bucket list for years. While watching Jordan Fabrics Youtube, I came across an easy method for assembling this type of quilt. Jordan calls it the Roundabout. I followed her pattern for what I call my kaleidoscope quilt.

I wanted my first project of the year to be this project. After weeks of record rains and clouds, I was wishing for Spring and warmer weather.  I wanted a quilt with bright, warm colors too!

I remember as a child looking through those cheap kaleidoscopes seeing a rainbow of colors. That was my goal for this quilt, warmth. I had to purchase a 45 degree ruler for cutting the triangles and some additional fabrics to complement the multi-color, flower background fabric.

I lost count of how many triangles I cut.

Assembling my blocks, I made sure of being careful with keeping perfect 1/4 inch seams. 

Took me some time arranging my pattern. Now one can see the circles formed from triangles. 

Next was cutting out and laying the backside of the quilt. Yup, this will be a quilt-as-you-go!

After sandwiching the layers, I quilted each block. Front fabric of blocks 9.5 inches, batting 8.5 inches, and back fabric 10 inches are the measurements. Blocks were then sewn together with the 1/4 inch seams going to the back. 

Two inch sashing strips folded down to one inch were used to cover the seams on the backside of the quilt. I originally had a very dark green in my fabrics that I decided not to use in the binding. Instead I went for the dark blue with the dots along with a pinkish fabric with pastel colors that isn't in the line-up of fabrics. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this quilt pattern and assembling as a quilt-as-you-go.

Signs of Spring are starting to show with some decorative fruit trees in bloom.