I Heart (Quilt) Valentine’s Day

Like this? Click or tap to share it

When my girls were small, I made them a little fabric valentine every year. One year it was these pillowcases (now a bit the worse for wear):

Another year I made little stuffed hearts from cutter quilts and sewed a little pewter angel charm to each one, then threaded the heart onto a leather cord to make a Valentine’s necklace.

Now my girls are unsentimental teenagers and their favorite Valentines are gift cards to stores at the mall. But I still like making Valentines. Hence this quilt.

This is the second quilt I’ve made based on this simple heart pattern I found on Freda’s Hive. I liked the first I made (detailed instructions here),  but I still have a shortage of Valentine’s decorations at my house, so I thought I’d make a different variation on my own design.

I used exactly the same pattern I did for the little pink quilt, with three little changes:

  • I switched from pink fabrics to scrappy red for the heart, and a white fabric with little red cherries for the background.
  • I also increased the size of the quilt by using 5″ squares instead of 3-1/2″. (I just happened to have a bunch of 5″ red squares already cut.)
  • I left out the “XO”. The scrappy red fabrics in this quilt made an extra design element seem unnecessary.
  • I sewed a fancy silver button to the center of the heart. I’m planning to add a whole column of buttons, but the center one was the only one I could stitch on by machine, so it’s the only one that got done before photo time.

Here’s how the quilt turned out:

blank

I have mixed feelings about the loop pattern I machine quilted around the heart. It looks a little too much like the Sacred Heart of Jesus and not quite enough like a “Be Mine” style heart. I also failed to leave enough empty space around the edge of the quilt to keep the binding from covering up some of the quilting. This is a mistake I’ve made a number of times. Maybe one of these days I’ll learn.

Until then, my motto is “Be proud of your mistakes!”

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.