Day 349 – Pebble Hearts

It’s really interesting how simple shapes can be combined in infinite ways to create new and interesting textures. For this design, I started the same way as Pebble Paisley, but instead of travel stitching all the way back to the beginning, I just branched off from the top. Working that way from both sides ended up looking like this Pebble Heart:

Where have I been??? In the studio quilting a modern quilt top! Yes, I will stop hording my pretty quilt soon and share photos, but it’s just so nice building suspense. Suffice it to say, I’m working on a quilt that could easily be put on the wall as art or on the couch as a throw – how’s that for multitasking!

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. The hardest part of this design is stitching the initial line of circles. If you find yourself struggling, you can always stitch a simple tear drop shape and fill the space with circles instead of stitching them free form.

Design Family – Pivoting. This is a slightly different Pivoting Design because it has 2 pivot points – at the top of the heart and the bottom where the design begins. This creates a slightly darker thread texture in both of those places so those areas will always show up darker on the surface of your quilt.

Directional Texture – All Directions. The neat thing about Pebble Hearts is just how much the pebbles are going to show up on the surface. The combination of the darker circles with lines of echo quilting is going to create a really interesting design on any scale.

Suggestions for Use – Because I’m in a mood to quilt BIG, I’m wondering what this design would look like on a large scale. Try stitching the circles around the size of nickels and quarters, then swirl around to create a 3-4 inch heart shape. It’s not only going to look amazing, it will also fill the surface of your quilt very quickly!