Quilt Along #45 – Share the Love with Heart Confetti!

It’s Quilt Along time and this is the last design we’re learning for the year! Can you believe we’ve quilted together through 45 weeks of this year? It’s amazing to see just how far everyone linking up has come from the beginning of the year!

For today, we’re going to learn a fantastic heart design called Heart Confetti.

This is kind of a blend of Pivoting and Overlapping designs because it contains elements of both and the great news is this design can easily work anywhere and everywhere on your quilts. I’d say the best possible choice would be to use this as an all-over design and quilt it over a big bed quilt using Quadrant Quilting.

For the Batik Beauty quilt, I choose to use it in the sashing, then expanded into one green block. You can see what I mean if you watch this handy video:

In the video, I began with a review of the tools and materials I use every day to free motion quilt on my home sewing machine. Here’s the list: Supreme Slider, Machingers Gloves, Little Genie Magic Bobbin Washer, and Isacord Thread.

You can always stock up on these tools and supplies over at the LeahDay.com Quilt Shop. All orders to the shop help support this project and allow me to continue making videos week after week, year after year!

Don’t forget! We will be linking up next week (Dec 26th) with a review of the entire year, so if you’d like to share a “before / after” of your free motion quilting, or show off your awesome new skills, please plan on linking up next week!

Getting back to free motion quilting, you might be wondering how Batik Beauty finished up.  Here’s a shot of the finished quilt: (You can click on this photo to zoom in for a better look)

Chaos is probably the best word to describe it, but I absolutely love how this quilt turned out! It has been a UFO since James was in diapers and now it’s finally quilted, bound, and I’ve enjoyed snuggling with it on the couch this fall.

Why was this quilt a UFO for so long? First reason is I knew the black background would be a great place to quilt and teach within a real quilt, but I just couldn’t free myself from the idea that I had to teach one design over the whole thing. How much is enough to show how a design will look?

Around August or September – whenever I started UFO Sunday, I finally found the nerve to get over my crap about it. The black background fabric has been a wonderful high contrast to the white thread and it’s shown up terrifically in over 15 quilt along videos.

So personally, Batik Beauty has been a wonderful learning experience on how to overcome my need for perfection and just use what I have, teach what I can, and allow it to be what it is without obsessing about it.

It is from this experience that I’m freeing myself to teach Express Your Love next year and finally pursuing my goal to combine my passion for trying new techniques, creating new designs, creating a beautiful quilt, and teaching and sharing it all online all at the same time.

It’s easy to lock yourself in a box and place a hundred rules on a project. It’s even easier to convince yourself that there is only “one way” to do something.

I think I love Batik Beauty so much more now simply because that quilt is now a testament to working outside of the box. Want to try a design? Stitch it a bit! Are you bored? Switch designs and try something new!

Why does everything have to make so much SENSE all the time? Allow yourself the freedom to pursue any idea, any design, any direction, any scale, and have FUN.

And to answer the last question you might be wondering – What will it look like if….?

The only way to answer that question is to try it! Stitch it out and see for yourself! Give yourself permission to experiment, and like any mad scientist – to have fun trying new things and exploring this amazing world of fabric, thread, texture, and design!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day