Superbowl Quilting

Here's what I was working on last night while the rest of the family watched the Superbowl. I finished the last of the blocks for my daughter's new quilt. I now have to join all the blocks, but seeing them all up on the design wall is inspiring me to keep going.


The hearts are paper pieced using Cindi Edgerton's Heartfelt tissue paper foundations. The setting is mine, thanks to graph paper, coloured pencils (gotta love colouring!) and playing around on the design wall to fine tune colour placements.

I asked my daughter's opinion about fabrics for borders. She had a definite preference for "the light blue". That was actually the light aqua colour with the swirls. I decided the quilt needed a slightly darker border than that to frame it, but I kept the light blue theme. I came home from the local quilt shop on Friday with the blue on the far left in the photo below. I was also looking for more of the polka dot fabric I used in the heart blocks (far right), but had to settle for the smaller, denser polka dot (second from left). Happily, once I got it home with all the finished blocks I realized the denser polka dot will work better as a thin inner border than my original choice. It all looks like I planned it all out ahead of time :).


I'll post a picture of the finished top when it gets done, but it will be a while before you see the finished quilt. My daughter has a very realistic view of my quilting speed. She told me she was excited to see her new quilt come together, but she didn't expect it to actually be on her bed until next year since it will need to be quilted. I offered to send it out to be machine quilted to speed things up, but she declined. She explained that it would be cozier if I did all the work on it. Here I was, finally ready to part with some cash to get a quilt done sooner, and she sweet-talked me into taking the slow route. Ah well, since she cares, I'll be happy enough to hand quilt it :) I'm thinking heart chains or cables, and somewhere in there I have to quilt her name.

Now I'm off to do more quilting on "Kicking and Screaming". Thanks for all your encouraging words about that quilt. They gave me a nudge to keep at it, and I think it may finally be tamed. Perhaps I'll be sewing on binding by next week.