Love and Cuddles

I haven't made a baby quilt in ages, but when I pieced a backing for Love Large,  my brain latched onto that backing design as the perfect start to a baby quilt.  I'm thrilled with how Love and Cuddles turned out.

Love and Cuddles baby quilt

Here's the inspiration quilt backing for reference.

Backing of Love Large was the inspiration for Love and Cuddles.

Step one towards turning this into a baby sized quilt was to scale down the size of the hearts.  I knew I'd need skinnier strips for a smaller heart but I still planned plain vertical strips.  The visual interest would come from the different fabrics.

When I started thinking about fabric amounts for a pattern I realized that at a smaller scale, a single strip of any one fabric wouldn't use a significant portion of even the smallest cut you can usually buy.  Some shops will cut as small as 1/8 yard, but many will round to 1/4 yards.  Either way, there would be a lot of leftover.

With that in mind, I looked for ways to make the heart visually interesting with only two colors.  Here's my little test block.  I was happy to be able to spin the seams in that middle section to minimize the bulk.  Pressing instructions in the pattern reflect that, or you can press to one side as you prefer.

Test block for Love and Cuddles

It was quick and easy.  I built the base, sliced it and rebuilt it. No individual squares to cut and sew together.  This definitely had potential.   They seemed  a little too small to take the stage all alone against the background panels, so I framed them for a more emphasis.

When I was ready to make the sample quilt, I knew I didn't want to use traditional pink or blue.  I thought some of the currently trendy less traditional neutral tones could look cute, but would look drab out of context on a patter cover.  With that in mind I headed to the quilt shop and browsed for an hour until prints from a 2023 collection from Riley Blake caught my eye.  With those in hand I picked out coordinating tone-on-tones to round out my fabric selection.

The stars and clouds prints and the plaid are from a collection called "It's a Boy", but I think the theme and the green and yellow prints are gender neutral.

It took me about 5 hours to make the top, from pressing the fabric to sewing the last stitch.  That included time to rip stitches and resew when I sewed a whole side panel on upside down. Oops! 

I moved on to the quilting before I took a photo of the top.  I kept the quilting vey simple to match the simple piecing.  The walking foot, as is often the case, was my tool of choice.  

First I stitched in the ditch along every seam in the heart and in the yellow frame, then filled in with a little bit of outline quilting.  Usually, I outline quilt 1/4" from the seams, but this time I chose to use 1/2" spacing.  This echoes the 1/2" between the sides of the hearts and the yellow frame.  I repeated the 1/2" spacing in the beadboard quilting in the background panels, just a small way to tie the quilting in the hearts with the quilting in the rest of the quilt.

Five generous quilters offfered to test the pattern for me.  I greatly appreciate their help.  Despite my careful proofreading and tech editing, there were still a couple of mistakes to catch, so I owe a huge thanks to Pat Minnick, Vicki O., Tammy Howell, Elizabeth, and Susan Brown.

City Line, the other quilt I designed while working on Love large, is up next.  There will be a quilt-along for that one!  I'm still working out the details, including the dates, but I'm committed to it :)

Time to go make dinner again.  I'm not inspired tonight.  I wrote a menu for the week, but none of what seemed appealing before I did the groceries is whetting my appetite today.  What do you do when that happens?

I'll figure something out.  In the meantime, happy quilting and I'll see you next time.

Joanne

Find the PDF version of the Love and Cuddles pattern in my Etsy shop or ask for the print version at your favourite quilt shop.

Love Large matching pillows

Tidying up after making Love Large, I pondered what to do with the bonus triangles cut away while shaping the heart.  Should they head to the scrap bin or the orphan blocks collection?  Maybe they could become a small bonus project?

Bonus pillows to go with the Love Large quilt

I toyed with the idea of a runner or table topper, then decided I really didn't need another runner.  I could use more variety in pillow covers for the throw pillows on my couch though.  I'm tired of looking at the basic brown ones that came with the basic (but comfy) brown couch.

The left and right pillows in the photo above were easy enough to plan.  They used the offcut triangles from the large stitch-and-flip corners of the Love Large heart.  I needed to trim the background one to match the size of the strip triangle, sew the diagonal seam, and trim to the right size for my pillow form.

The center one took a little more thought. I made HST using the offcut strip triangles and background triangles, then experimented with 2 block x 2 block layouts.  These are just the ones I took pictures of.  You could also make a classic pinwheel, or lay them all out with the purple triangle on the lower left.  I've included multiple bonus project layouts at the end of the pattern for inspiration.

4 possible layout for the bonus HST

I decided to add extra stitch and flip corners to the plain halves of the HST using extra purple scraps.  I would have made them larger, but I was limited by the size of the scraps.  Still, it adds a little something to the center of the pillow.

Bonus block from bonus HST

So there we have 3 square pillow tops ready to go, fairly quickly.  The sane thing to do would have been to cut backing panels from a single fabric for the back of the pillows for a quick finish.

I was not sane.  I had more scraps of the purple fabrics just sitting in a pile looking pretty.  This is why it took me longer to finish the pillows than it did to make the quilt.

I couldn't just piece scraps together willy nilly.  I had to overthink things and plan.  Consider every scrap and decide what would be the most effective use of them.  I did math and shuffled scraps again.  Several weeks later I finally stitched the last stich in the pillows.

Backs of the bonus pillows to match Love Large

Despite all that planning, the backs didn't turn out the way I pictured them in my head.  The middle one is simple, no scraps in sight.  The other two lack the symmetry I was aiming for.  The center strip was supposed to run exactly down the middle between the pieced strips.  It's particularly apparent on the pillow on the right that it does not run down the middle.  What happened?

I like to make zippered pillow covers that are easy to swicth out with the seasons or my mood.  That center strip is actually the flap that hides the zipper.  When I planned the two panels that make up the back of the pillow I forgot that the flap would not be centered on the zipper, but sewn into one side of it and extend further past it on the other side.  My planning and math were based on two panels the same size, tied together by the zippper exactly in the center.  That's exactly where the zipper lies, just like I planned, but the flap isn't centered on the zipper so it's off center, not as I planned.

The pillow on the left had a couple of extra snafus.  First, the strips of purple squares were not supposed to have a strip of background between them. I cut the background fabric parts too narrow, 1/2" less than my notes said. I needed to make up the 1/2" so I slipped an extra background strip in there.  Second, I sewed the first panel to the zipper with the wide strip of background by the zipper, opposite of what I planned.  By this point I was ready to be done so I left it and flipped the second panel to match.  Seeing them now I think it would look better the other way around and wish I had taken the time to rip and resew, but it doesn't bug me enough to take the pillow apart and redo it!

I've had a few offers to take the pillows off my hands if I'm not happy with them, but their slight wonkiness has grown on me.  On days when the lack of symmetry bothers me, I'll just make sure the pillows are showing off the front side.

What would you make with the offcuts from the Love Large pattern?  Let me know in the comments.

Happy quilting,

Joanne

PS:  The quilt is NOT a twin size, but it has enough length to be a good bed topper, draping just over the foot of the bed if I pull it way from the headboard and let the pillows fill the space at the head of the bed.  A plain white blanket underneath can be a bedspread while the throw adds the colour.

Love Large heart quilt

In late January inspiration struck for a heart design using 2.5" strips. 

Did I have any strip packs/jelly rolls on hand?  No.  Was the quilt shop open?  No.  Could I wait a couple of days?  Also no.

What's an impatient quilter to do?  Raid the stash, of course!  The trick was to find enough coordinating width-of-fabric (WOF) pieces to cut enough strips that played well together.  I really thought I would have options, but these purple leftovers from Island Batik projects were really the only ones with enough WOF pieces.  

Leftover batiks from Heavy Metal, Secret Garden and Rosy Bloom
collections from Island Batik

It's a good thing these three different collections shared some common ground so I could cobble together a collection of 38 strips. Choosing the 26 to start the panel, then deciding in what order to lay them out took a chunk of time, but I like what I ended up with.

It may seem fussy to cut them all carefully to the same length before sewing them together, rather than just sewing and then trimming the resulting panel.  However, sizing first then matching and pinning ends and center of strips when sewing them together helped ensure the resulting panels were straight and didn't curve.

The rest of the strips ended up in strip sets to make units for the center inserts.  Add some huge and some medium stitch-and-flip corners, a little slicing, inserting strip-pieced bands and voilà!

I tested a different construction method for the bottom point of the heart but it didn't work well and wasted the light gold background I had pulled from my stash.  I didn't have enough of anything else to use for the background so I had to wait for the quilt shop to open after all!

While I was disapppointed not to make the quilt entirely from stash, it was for the best in the end.  This background is perfect, a much better match for the purples than the gold was.

I'm not a big fan of square quilts, unless it's a queen size, so I added wide top and bottom borders to make the quilt rectangular.  I waffled between adding plain background borders and adding decorative accent strips.  When  I decided to skip them I went back to the quilt shop for extra background to make up the difference.  When I got home, I promptly decided  the quilt needed the accents after all, so the extra background augmented the stash.

Rosie approved of the accent strips.  Who am I to disagree with the Quilt Supervisor?

Having bought fabric when I had not planned to, I doubled down on stash for the backing.  I didn't have enough of any one fabric, but I did have some larger pieces left over from previous backings.  I also had scraps of the purples I used in the heart, and a little spare time to play.

Ta dah!

Backing of Love Large using assorted Island Batik fabrics

I thought I would get the quilt finished by Valentine's Day.  I was mistaken.  Life and other priorities intruded and I didn't get the quilt basted and start quilting until March.

You know the walking foot and I are great friends.  We teamed up again for outline quilting in the strips.

It looks so different on the back!

I had planned to quilt diagonal lines in the background, but as I was looking through quilt photos for something else I remembered how I quilted the background of my batik Modern Lace.  

Using my trusty Hera marker, I marked the design on the heart quilt to see how it might look.  I love auditioning quilting lines with the hera marker.  It works by making an indentation, so it mimics a bit of the texture that quilting would give.

I felt confident enough of the design to start quilting.  

I started second-guessing my plan after quilting the lower right corner of the quilt...

...but I really didn't want to pick out what I'd done so I committed to finishing as I started.  In the end, I'm very happy with how it turned out.  This photo isn't pretty, but it does show the quilting.

I used Hobbs 80/20 cotton/polyester blend for the batting.  Combined with the low density quilting, it made this quilt light and soft with a lovely drape.  It's been couch-tested and I love it!

Writing the pattern took me a little longer.  As is often the case, something that would be quick and easy to demonstrate takes a bit more effort to describe in words and illustrations.  Thanks to these quilters who volunteered to test if those words and illustrations were clear enough to follow:

Jackie Morrical

Lessa

Barbara Paventi

Ronda Dye

Dawn

Jilleen Neumann 

Coming up with a name for the quilt and pattern was challenging.  I wanted a name that didn't already have someone else's pattern attached to it.  Guess what?  There are a lot of heart quilts, and their designers had already come up with my clever ideas for names.  In the end, I settled on "Love Large".  It's not the cutest idea I came up with, but it was the only one not already taken and it isn't awful so there you have it.

Love Large by Canuck Quilter Designs
Inspected by Rosie, canine quilt inspector

I 'm so happy with this quilt, and also thrilled that it led to two more designs.  City Line came to mind about the same time as I worked with these strips, and Love and Cuddles was inspired by Love Large's pieced backing. I'll blog about those soon.  If you subcribe to have blog posts delivered directly to your inbox, heads up that you'll be receiving more mail than usual in the next few weeks!

Time to go make supper.  I think two-bean tuna salad on bulgur with cantaloupe for dessert sounds good today.  I also have a hankering to bake, and since I can fob off most of it to my son when he pops in for a visit tomorrow I may go ahead and bake some peanut butter cookies.

What's up in your sewing room and/or kitchen today?

Joanne

Find the PDF download version ofthe pattern in my Etsy shop
or ask for a print version at your favourite quilt shop.