Hearts-A-Plenty

I've been busily sewing away at my current project all this week. Today during dd's nap I decided to say finis, I am done. Here it is, and I've named it "Hearts-A-Plenty." I wish I could have photographed it flat, but the floor in the living room was a disaster of toys and other accumulated junk and before cleaning I wanted to finish sewing. (hmm, clean or quilt, clean or quilt -- QUILT!)

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this one. Each of the "inside" fabrics is a heart print. I started collecting these awhile ago with no real plan and I finally got to use them. I've been fascinated with circles lately and this pattern from Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting (Sept/Oct '06) let me play with some. I don't know about anyone else, but I tend to get stuck on a technique or a shape and play with it for awhile. I think circles are going to be showing up again soon, but not necessarily this block.

You can see from this detail picture some of the machine blanket stitch (not bad for my first time though it got a bit tedious) and some of the heart fabrics. The edges are supposed to be folded in and stitched down as well to make all of the blocks "square" but I am liking the rounded edges and that you can then see how the blocks are constructed. I'm still kind of debating about whether or not I should do more blanket stitching around the outside edges to "finish" it -- but I don't know. Any opinions?

This one was fun to do -- though if I were to use the technique again I would probably choose to not use any batting at all and make a summer spread. The pattern called for using flannel and that would probably be less bulky than the thin cotton batting I used -- but I think it would be easier to manage if it were just two layers rather than three. Why didn't I use flannel? Mostly because I didn't have any that was light enough. All of the flannel in my stash would have shown through the white prints, and I wanted to make this one entirely from my stash. Oh well, lessons learned (always a good thing), quilt finished (maybe - I may decide to add that additional stitching), 36 fat quarters and a quilt entirely from my stash, and dd has yet another nap time quilt (I am going to have to stop making this child quilts at some point -- I will make her the Dick and Jane quilt and Summer Sorbet but after that I think she's done for a few years at least).

Now I just need to tackle some of that cleaning that needs to be done -- and after that some homework -- a stack of papers to grade -- and somewhere in there sleep. Hmnn -- I think my next project is going to be something quick, at least until the semester is over (thankfully soon). Since I tend to get obsessive about my projects and want to work on them when I should be doing other things, quick and simple is going to be my mantra until the beginning of May. I see more bags in my future!