For awhile I looked at that fluffy stack and waited for inspiration to come. I wanted to make a quilt top to give to the AllStar Quilters For Kids, an offshoot of my guild that makes quilts for kids in need. It wasn’t too long before I got an idea, and I sketched it out in my illustration Program, Adobe Illustrator.

Illustrator is not a quilt-dedicated program, but it has a grid and a “snap to grid” function so I can easily lay out quilts to get an idea of what they’ll look like and what the dimensions are.

I decided to use the blue and the yellow hearts, and sorted through the stack to pull those out. I hallucinated in my head that I needed 6 blue and 3 yellow hearts, and snap! that’s exactly how many I had. Kismet!

Yeah right. When I went to put things together I realized that I needed 4 yellows. Off I went to those large scraps of patchwork that I had fished out of the trash LOL! I sewed the two largest ones together, added a couple of little pieces to one end, and had enough for that fourth heart!

Here’s what I made.

I fused the hearts to the background fabric, top-stitched around the edges, and cut away the background fabric and the fusible interfacing behind the hearts.

The alternating squares are all from stash fabrics that were happy to find a home. I had to go out and look for the two border fabrics (because I don’t have very many large pieces in my stash).

Now, what to do with the remaining colors of hearts in that pancake stack… hmmm…

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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You may remember me posting about some random hunks of patchwork I had dug out of the UFO pile.

I had an idea! I thought of the fusible interfacing method for turned-edge appliqué! I felt this was a natural for making something appliqué with all those seams.

I marked the hearts on the smooth size of the interfacing and pinned in place over the right side of the patchwork.

I did a whole tutorial on this method over at the Show & Tell Center. Check out The Anatomy of a Lollipop for a refresher.

Shortened up the stitch length a bit and sewed all the way around each shape, on the drawn line.

Cut out the hearts, leaving a 1/8″ seam allowance. Clipped the notches.

Cut a slit in the interfacing and turned the hearts. A quick run along the seam with a craft stick and a poke at the tip with a stylus and that’s it! They look like a stack of fluffy pancakes.

I know from making gobs and buckets of lollipops that these will smooth out and flatten when they’re fused to their backgrounds.

I thought I was now done with those hunks of patchwork. However, as the project went along, I found myself pulling the bigger scraps back out of the trash. Will this never end!!!?

Now what am I going to do with the hearts? Hmmm…

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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