Quilt Block Challenge – Ruby Heart

 

Every year our quilt guild does a Block challenge.  You are given a background fabric and an accent fabric to create a 12 1/2 inch block.  You can piece it, applique it, anything you want, it just has to be in the theme of the challenge which is usually our Quilt Show theme.  For this year our theme is Ruby Red Celebration for our 40^th quilt show.

When I heard the theme, I immediately thought of the jewel Ruby partly because it is my birth stone.  My second thought was of a TV show I had recently watched which contained a ruby in the shape of a heart as part of the story line.  And since I am rather found of hearts, I thought I would make a red pieced heart for my block. 

What I thought of was a foundation pieced heart, not really a paper pieced one, but more of the crazy quilt style of foundation piecing.  So my first job was to find a heart shape I liked.  I wanted a very rounded one so I enlarged my Heartfully Cheryl logo and chose the biggest heart to use.  I decided to create the heart and then applique it to the white background fabric.

With this kind of foundation piecing, it is good to use a sew-in interfacing or some light weight muslin.  You don’t want anything too heavy or it will make the appliqueing difficult to do and make the whole block too thick. I decided to use the interfacing. 

The first thing I did was  cut out the interfacing.  I traced the heart design and cut it about ¼ inch from the traced line.  Even in applique you have to have a seam allowance.

The next step was to gaver my ruby fabrics.  I decided I wanted the fabric in different shades of red but with very little other colors.  So I picked those reds that would appear from a distance to be a solid

So I have my heart pattern and my fabric, the next step is to sew the heart.  And that will be in the next blog so stay tuned.

 ©2022 Cheryl Fillion

New Year’s Resolutions

 (An update of a previous blog.  I am hoping if I post it, it will motivate me to complete my resolution.)

How many of you make New Year’s Resolutions?  Is it to stop a bad habit or lose weight or exercise more?  Getting healthy sure is a good thing to do.

But what if your resolution was to be more creative?  What if you made a promise to yourself to do more art or sewing or learn a new craft? 

 Every year I go through my unfinished quilting projects and decide which one I am going to finish for the upcoming quilt show in March.  It is amazing to me when I find I only have a little more to do on a project for it to be finished. 

Other years I have promised myself to take advantage of the classes my quilt guild offers.  I have learned different ways to quilt on my home sewing machine, new ways to appliqué, new embroidery stitches (after a recent class with our guild I can now do a successful bullion stitch) and can now piece a Y-seam in a quilt block.

This coming year 2022 I want to try more embroidery techniques.  I plan to join a hand embroidery group at a local quilt shop.  There are two quilt tops that I want to add embroidery too.  I am hoping if I work on it around other people will motivate me to actually do it but also help me to get ideas of motifs to embroider and stitches to use. 

Why not make sure you add some creativity to your resolutions list?  You can still break a bad habit, lose weight and exercise more but make sure you also create new art that represents who you are and what your 2022 brought to your life.

Happy 2022 to you.

Cheryl

 

©2017, 2019, 2021 - Cheryl Fillion

Christmas Ornament 2021

Every year I make an ornament to give to family and friends.  I have been doing this for many years.  This year I decided to take a necklace idea I had for my yoyo talk in August and turn it into an ornament.

What made it fun was I got to buy and use holiday buttons. I have always enjoyed buttons. I remember going through this light blue round tin container my mother had for her buttons.  I never had a reason to use any, I just liked the look and shape and color of so many buttons.  Now a days I especially like the novelty ones.  They are bright and imaginative but I don’t often use novelty buttons for my clothes.  I just stick to the faithful round ones. But this gave me a reason to buy some Christmas buttons.  There were candy canes, and packages, gingerbread men and ornaments.  One packet had a sleigh, reindeer, Santa head, and Christmas tree.  All these buttons were shank buttons but buttons with holes would work just as well.

If you remember back in October, I wrote about making a necklace of yoyos and a flamingo button to go along with my talk on yoyos at my local Quilt guild.  Here is a picture of it. 

 

For the necklace I used a 2 1/4 inch yoyo (I started with a 5 inch circle), then the middle pink yoyo was 1 ½ inch yoyo (3 ½ inch circle) and on top was a 1 inch by 1 ½ inch oval (2 ½  by 3 ½  inch oval piece of fabric) and then top with the button.  I decided to use the same sizes for the ornaments, 

The holiday buttons were all kinds of shapes and sizes.  Some were bigger than the small oval yoyo so I decided to go with just the 2 round yoyos.  But then there were some small buttons that did not cover the hole in the yoyo like the bigger buttons did, so for some I used the oval yoyo after all.  The hole in the oval yoyo was small enough that ever the small buttons could cover it.

I had some Christmas fabric cut in 3.5 and 5 inches so I picked the colors from what I had cut.  If you do this ornament, you could mix and match or use all the same colors.  The one thing to consider is will your button show up on the fabric you choose.  You don’t want a primarily green button on a green yoyo; your button won’t show up very well.  You can see the tree in the picture below but it doesn’t stand out.  Take a look at the reindeer pictures above.  Can you tell the reindeer has antlers?  Not easily.  So, choosing the colors of your yoyos is important with what colored button you use.

See how much better the tree looks on the red yoyo.

Once you have your yoyos made, you have to sew they all together. (to be honest I made the yoyos as I made the ornament so I wouldn’t forget what fabric I was using for which button.) ,   Putting the ornament together I started from the top down.  I sewed the button on first yoyo and then sewed the rest of the yoyos together.  I found it easier to get the button on if I was just manipulating one yoyo (and then the threads were hidden).

When I attached yoyo to yoyo, I tried to hide my stitches under the top yoyo just like you would if you were appliqueing a picture for a quilt.  This is especially important when you are sewing on the bottom yoyo.  If your stitches just catch the first layer of fabric of the bottom yoyo, you won’t see any stitches on the back of the ornament. 

Once all the yoyos and button are sewn together just add a thread through the top edge of the biggest yoyo for a hanger.  I try to match the color of that big yoyo.  And I used perle cotton for the hanger as it is a bit thicker than regular sewing thread and is not likely to break.

And now you have a new ornament.  Happy Decorating.

 

©2021 Cheryl Fillion