Saturday, February 6, 2010

Scrappy Valentines

This Monday the small quilt group that I belong to, Quilters Pets, is making heart blocks for Valentines Day. There was a paper pieced method and a template method for doing these blocks. Given that you have to deal with bias cut fabric if you are going to use a template, I decided to go with paper piecing.

The look is suppose to be scrappy in that each of the red fabrics is suppose to be a different red, with the top 2 red sections and bottom 2 red sections being a darker red and the middle 2 red sections being a medium red. I had a few reds in my stash but had to go out and buy some more. The biggest problem was finding medium red fabric. When you look at fabric on the bolt in large sections it can look different than when that same fabric is only a 2 or 3 inch square piece in a block. So after a couple of shopping trips this was the best that I had and I wasn't in the mood to go out again to find more red fabric.

Below was my first block that I had made before I realized that each red fabric had to be different and sent me out shopping for more fabric. So by the third shopping trip and the colours still weren't quite what I had in mind, I decided that they would just have to do.

These just might become part of a charity quilt. If anyone is interested in the paper pieced pattern, this is it. Please note that the finished block size is 8" so when you go to print this pattern out you will need to print it to larger paper (11" X 17") so that you can get the 1/4" seam allowances around the perimeter in. They are not drawn in on this pattern.

4 comments:

Sand and Sunshine said...

Early happy Valentines to you and your pretty hearts! All those trips to the fabric store, I'll bet by the end they were greeting you with a warm cup of tea!

I know most likely not, but wouldn't it be nice to shake the snow off and be handed a warm cup?

hetty said...

Good for you for choosing the paper pieced method. I am sure you would not have done that before the cat and dog blocks. Hmmm. I think I need to find an excuse like this to make many trips to the quilt shop!

LongIslandSue said...

This is pretty cool. I bet it would be hard to find those reds, but you did a really nice job. I have never done paper piecing, so I am very envious!

Angela said...

YOur blocks turned out great and I like your fabric choices