You Gotta Have Heart

Now that song will be running through my head all day - oh well, it is a nice song. Better than I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas I guess.

I spent some time yesterday with my sewing machine - finally - I think it was beginning to think it was an orphan. A small internet group I belong to sends out heart blocks (or flower blocks) to our members in celebration of births, marriages, happy events and in memorials to loved ones that pass on. I was a bit behind on my hearts - so I made four yesterday.

First I got out my yellow scraps . . .

And my blue scraps . . .

And punched the pattern for paper piecing. I layer several pieces of paper together, with the pattern on top and sew through them all with an unthreaded needle. I get several designs done at a time and the patterns are easy to follow once they are punched. I save the top pattern for the numbering if necessary - and it was necessary with this pattern. I love the pattern, but you do have to follow the numbering - and sometimes I will even write the colors in the spaces just to make sure I don't make mistakes.

I got the pattern from Etsy - you can find it and many others in this Etsy Store - Piece By Number. She has several other patterns I would like to try - and her prices are great. She sends you a PDF of the pattern, so there is very little waiting - not like waiting for the mail, that's for sure.

And speaking of mistakes - here is my first one . . .

And here it is corrected . . .

Next I made a yellow heart . . . the pattern is called Feathers in My Heart.

I've had some friends say that they don't do paper piecing because it is so wasteful of fabric. Here is my pile of waste fabric after making two hearts - I put the bobbin there for size comparison. Most of the trimmings left over from paper piecing are smaller than the bobbin - most are just tiny little slivers - and I don't cut carefully, I just whack off a piece of fabric that is about the right size, stitch it on and trim.

Next I decided to make some applique hearts - and used this very pretty multi-colored fabric.

I place the pieces so that each section of the heart was a different color. This is the first heart - I call it the blue heart . . . pinned and ready for hand applique.

And here is the "green" heart - I love the way the colors can be changed around, and still only use one fabric for the whole heart.

Green heart - finished . . .

Blue heart - finished. Should I do some fancy crazy quilting stitches on these?