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.