All You Need Is

Here is my starting point for the retreat weekend. I bought this package of pre-cut half square triangles by Moda in their Valentine's Day inspired line. All reds, pinks, whites, and chocolate browns. My thinking was that my hand wasn't up to a whole lot of precise cutting. Wielding that rotary cutter was a bit scary with a hand that hasn't been used for much precise work in a few months now. So I thought starting out with some triangles would be a good jump start to a project.I also bought a selection of pinks and reds to use in the rest of the quilt that I was now forming in my mind. This was good to do because I was able to make sure the reds and pinks played nicely with the triangle colors. Clashy reds are hard to take sometimes!Here is how I laid out the triangles on the carpet in the retreat workroom. I kind of like this carpet it reminds me of Mary Englebreit style flowers.

After all the triangles were together, I went with my sketched out plan and made a checkerboard border. I found a nice brown with pink polka dots to use along with those prechose fat quarters. Also this is Jaye's portable design wall, a very handy gizmo that is a foldable frame with a flannel fabric stretched over. It was nice to be able to see my work in progress vertically and against a neutral background.

The next step was making appliqued heart blocks using reds and pinks that I had in my dyed stash and red and pink boxes, as well as the fat quarters I started out with. I free hand cut the hearts, using the previously cut heart as a size guide so that they aren't all exactly the same, but they are close.

I tried to match the thread used for the applique so that the pink ard red were somewhat matched. Pale pink, fuschia, orange red and red were all used at some point.

It was fun to mix and match all those reds and pinks and come up with some good looking combinations.Here is the craziest block. I figured it was all gooshy, cutesy stuff, so I needed a dose of reality. Love isn't all hearts and flowers all the time. Sometimes it is hard and painful and barb-wire-ish. Once I got this one done, the quilt felt more like me. It was good to do some fussy cutting to get some of the fabric patterns highlighted just right.

Here is how the partially done heart border looks, just how I pictured it, and sketched it, yay!This was my favorite heart combo. The orange red fabric glows with that little bit of green. Reminds me of that good old comfort food of tomato soup.

It was slow going doing all the applique work, I used a fusible tear-away stabilizer and pinned the heck out of every heart. It was good to see the border growing and growing as I worked through the morning of our last retreat day. Here is how it looks at home up on my design wall. Looks like I miscalculated on how many heart squares I needed to make, hmmmm. That's what I get for doing math calculations after dinner.
I'll post more when I get those last few done and the border together and put on. In my original sketch I also had an appliqued letter in each heart block going around the edge to spell out All You Need Is Love, Love, Love. We'll see if I do that or just quilt the words in. Only a few days until V-Day.