A Happy Mail Day

Lots of happy colors and blocks in the mail box today to brighten my day.

These swap blocks are for my

Happy Garden Block Quilt

I also received the last block for 

My Scrappy Heart Block Swap Quilt Started Here

It is a gray day with rain moving in this afternoon.

A good day to stay inside and sew.

May you have a happy quilty day, too!

Pieces of My Scrappy Heart

Today I needed to catch up on piecing some scrappy heart swap blocks.

Started Here

Nutmeg was my quilty kitty helper today.

Kitty and I have a few more blocks to make to mail out by the end of the month.

It has turned very warm and humid, more summer weather than spring.

We even had some thunderstorms move through tonight.

Tomorrow 

Strip Piecing

Strip Sets for making my blocks for my

Scrappy Heart Swap Started Here

Right now I have to make about 10 blocks to send.

Since these will be in different quilts they will look scrappy

even thought I made the constructions easier 

by breaking the pattern down into strip sets.

Here are my pieces. 

I sewed 6 four strip units and 2 two strip units

and cut them into 2.5" strip sets. 

I carefully pressed to nest and chain sewed.

Here are the four block units I made.

Sewed into two units.

Finished block.

Here is the back of my pressed block.

There are a lot of seams in this block.

Even with careful measuring and sewing to make my seams all an accurate 1/4" 

and careful pressing to make sure no fabric was left in the seams,

this is just barely a 12.5" block.

I will be adjusting my needle in future blocks to allow a few more threads in the seams

to make the blocks a smidge larger.

I am not a fan of "scant" quarter inch seams but this block requires it.

The pattern calls for more white background fabric between the blocks

so a minimal size variation should not be an issue

but I like to get my blocks to be the correct even size.

I do love the block pattern though and am looking forward 

to making and sending and receiving the swap blocks.

Looking forward to making the quilt, too.

:-) 

Scrappy Pink Heart Block

Scrappy Pink Heart Block

 

Today was a busier day, so I did not get to play on

my sewing machine until after dinner. 

 

Since I have been joining in the

Rainbow Scrap Challenge at So Scrappy 

on Saturdays, I decided to sew pink.

 

Since Valentine's Day is coming and I do not have a table topper for this holiday, it seemed like a good time to turn some of my pink scrap fabrics into a holiday project.

 

16 patch heart block

 

This is my pattern ... a pink post-it note stuck to my machine. After I started sewing I actually went a little more scrappy and put some pink HSTs inside the heart with my scraps.

The basic pattern calls for:

8 HST of pink and white to form the heart

2 white squares on the bottom outside corners

6 pink squares

You can make the block in any size.  I decided to make a block that will finish at 16 inches square.

So I cut:

8 white 5" squares
8 pink 5" squares
2 white 4.5 inch squares
6 inch 5" pink squares  (OR ... a few 4.5 inch pink squares
                                       and a few pink 5 squares (to make HSTs),
                                       as shown in my block)

To sew:

 

pair the 8 white and 8 pink squares; draw lines for your HST

chain sew

 

cut in half

press toward pink

trim and square to 4.5"

 

(Note:  if you are adding pink HST pairs, make these in the same manner)

 



layout block

sew in pairs and then into four quarter block units

 

sew into halves

your block is done!

 

May you have a Happy Heart!

 

<3