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Wonky Hearts!
~All You Need Is Love~




Free style primitive hearts are fun to make and make a great addition to your quilts!
"All You Need is Love" is one of my older quilts. Well, older improvisationally lettered quilts. I pieced it in January 2001.

This is a quilt that ended up looking nothing like I originally planned. I was going to have houses in here and free-pieced tulips and stars. But as I started making the wonky hearts, I loved how they were looking and all the other blocks I pieced went into the orphan bin. I just experimented with the different ways I could think of piecing the hearts, some of them more successful than others. I learned that hearts are not a good block to just slice some off if the blocks are too wide - I look at those hearts in particular and go eeeuw.

I had thought to quilt words into the different hearts just like on the candy hearts. "be mine" etc, but the hearts are just too small to make it worthwhile - the words wouldn't be legible. Instead I freehanded wavy lines, which turned out to be harder than I expected. My lines kept getting flatter and straighter so I'd have to get chalk back out and draw wavy lines. I like the look of it, but freehand fans are definitely more fun.

This is the basic way that I make wonky hearts. There are many other methods to make hearts, but I've found this to be the easiest way to get a bit of a rounded shape. Have to admit to being out of practice with the hearts - don't think I've made any in four years.

First off, I start with a square or rectangle and cut through the middle of it. I like my hearts to lean so I cut at an angle. This particular square was 3 1/2".

Next I lay one of my heart pieces on top of a background piece so that I can slice through the fabrics at the same time. Just have to make sure that there is at least a quarter inch or more of the background sticking out. This is just a bitty triangle. Repeat for the other side as well.
  

This is what the background triangles look like before they get sewn on.  As usual with triangles, at least a quarter inch has to be offset.

 This is what it looked like when I sewed both those triangles on. I obviously cut the one on the left a bit too skimpy.

 

 Not to worry, I just made my cut a bit deeper when I straightened up the sides. Now when I say straighten - I mean a straight edge following the heart fabric.  The sides will still taper and angle.

New triangles are made for the upper outer corners, in the same manner as the earlier triangles.

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<>After those are attached, you'll straighten the edges just like we did before, following the edge of the heart fabric.

Bigger triangles are cut for the bottom outer corners. For this step, make sure to at least hit the inner corner with your cut. If you make too shallow of a triangle, you'll have a flat-bottomed heart (which isn't necessarily wrong).

 

Attach the bottom triangles. Straighten the edges down the center and join together.

To finish off the heart block, attach fabric to the sides, and top or bottom if needed. When I made "All You Need is Love" I only added the side fabric as I joined the units together (ie one strip of fabric in between heart units, not two).

 

Here are some other hearts I've made recently. I'm not liking those pointy bits I'm getting on top of the hearts!  I'm going to have to do a better job of not overlapping those top triangles. I also like it better when the bottom bits of the heart come right together - I like them more offset. I'll loosen up as I keep playing.


Reach for the Stars

Reach for the Stars is another quilt with the wonky hearts. This is another of my post-9/11 "gonna get happy and positive" quilts. Lots of pink and purple made just for me.

The words read as follows:
  • Reach for the stars
  • Believe the Impossible
  • Be true to yourself
  • Follow your dreams
  • Listen to your heart

 I pieced the quilt top in 14 days. Before I started, I planned to have these words as well as stars, hearts and
asterisks (my name for the little * blocks that look like fireworks, snow, or stars depending on the context). I sewed the words, the hearts and the asterisks, but used sections of star fabric instead of piecing those. I really like how using big sections of fabric works in this quilt.

I sewed little rectangles onto strips, cut even, over and over again to get the border. So it wasn't strip pieced and I didn't use a foundation. I ended up with different widths of border and that's okay (although the pic doesn't do the border justice at all. Sorry about that - this is one of my quilts that's in storage right now). I quilted free-hand fans in black perle cotton.


Little Pink Houses

"Little Pink Houses" was made directly after "Reach for the Stars" using leftover asterisks, a heart, and the piano key border as well as some new blocks.

 

 

 
                                  



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