Happy Valentine’s Day!

I hope you’re having a very happy, heartfelt day! Please take a break today and do something fun just for yourself and your sweetie!

To celebrate this special heart shaped day, let’s look back at all of the designs we’ve had so far that use heart symbols as filler designs.

Hearts, like tear drops, are some of the easiest shapes to quilt. They flow wonderfully well and cover your quilt with a recognizable, loving texture.

So let’s look back at all the hearts from the start of the project:

Heart Paisley – Who knew paisley could have so many variations? Instead of starting with a tear drop, this time start with a heart for a totally different texture and look!

Queen of Hearts – This design was based off of the hearts on playing cards. This stacking design is a little more complicated, but definitely looks beautiful anywhere on your quilt.

Bleeding Heart – Hearts can even be found in nature, as you will find with this design based off of the Bleeding Heart flowers my mother always grew in the summer.

Heart Vine – Did you know heart shapes can make for fantastic looking leaves? Check out this design and see how these long, flowing hearts become leaves on a twisting, curling heart vine.

Definitely enjoy using these filler designs on your next Valentine’s day themed quilt!

Looking at this list, I can’t believe I’ve only used hearts in 4 designs. This is such a versatile symbol that I know there must be many more textures to create.

So what am I up to today on this snowy Valentine’s Day?

I’m off downstairs to start preparing fabric for My Cup Runneth Over. Yesterday I went fabric shopping at Mary Jo’s, one of the biggest fabric retailers on the East Coast.

For awhile I wandered the stacks trying to figure out what color her body should be, her hair, and the background.

I’ve already purchased the blue fabric from sewbatik.com, but because it’s not here yet, I was having trouble visualizing what the other colors should be.

Eventually I just started pulling the colors and batiks I liked and decided that if I end up with fabrics I don’t use on this quilt, I’ll use it all on the next one!

So today I’ll be washing, drying, starching, and ironing fabric while I prepare the pattern.

Last night I stayed up until 1 am working on the design and getting the lines just right. I’m really happy with it now and ready to jump right in and get started!

I still haven’t decided exactly how everything is going to go together, but I’m going to play with a few different techniques today to see what works best.

I think I might mix some of the elements of Ann Holmes’s No Sewing Until You Quilt It! method of applique with Sharon Schamber’s Piec-lique. I love both techniques and I think mixing the two will work really well for this quilt.

But it will depend on what happens when I start playing with it today! It’s always good to try out a design or technique on scraps before launching into the full quilt.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day