i heart anatomical hearts and i heart me!

one of these days i'll start working on larger scale projects again, but not today. i've been having so much fun with mini quilts the past few months!


i just finished this one today - which was good, cause today is the (extended) deadline!



a while back, Jenna from SewHappyGeek posted about a challenge that she was hosting. the idea was that participants make a mini-quilt based literally or figuratively on a single playing card. i immediately thought that was an awesome idea, and tucked it away in the back of my mind to stew over.


(i know a lot of you reading my blog now are sewing and quilty friends, but i used to do quite a bit of mixed media art work, and i always loved the imagery of playing cards, and the awesome backs of vintage ones. i was way too lazy to dig out my own stash, so i spent some time one night searching flickr. i found so many gorgeous cards!)


in the meantime, i was sewing up the hearts for Cynthia's bee blocks. remember those? i wanted to do a sample of the anatomical heart applique before i cut into Cynthia's fabric, so i cut it out in these red prints first. i ironed on the freezer paper and turned the edges down, then basted it into place on the background. and then it sat there.



i didn't start on it until long after i finished Cynthia's, and i've been working on the hand applique whenever i had a few minutes in waiting rooms, etc, but omg, hand applique takes forever! and honestly, my stitches weren't even as teensy on my own heart, since i knew it was going on a wallhanging, not a quilt that would be used and laundered. i also switched my technique, as you can see quite obviously from the back! part way through the applique, i decided that the teensy stitches were putting too much strain on the fold of the applique, and i really think making longer stitches helped. after i'd finished the hand work, i pieced together a 1/2" border using the same prints as those in the heart.



i was so indecisive about this mini quilt, about how i wanted to do the letters, how i wanted to do the little hearts. i definitely wasn't going to do raw edge applique, after all the time i spent on the freezer paper applique! but i couldn't decide. i was going to piece the letters, and then i decided to paperpiece them, so i spent a whole bunch of time drafting up a paperpiecing pattern for the letters and the small hearts. and then i changed my mind AGAIN, and made little improv hearts and machine stitched the letters. in between there, i also considered hand embroidering the letters and the hearts, but i knew i wouldn't have time. machine stitching it is!



i went through the fonts on my computer and chose my two favourites that seemed to match the hearts as well. i printed them out in a few different sizes, then traced them onto tear away stabilizer. i sewed along the outlines of the letters and removed the stabilizer. then i put more stabilizer underneath the pieces, and filled in the centres of the letters. i did manage to get most of the stabilizer out of the stitches, but i didn't want to take the chance of leaving visible stabilizer on the front.



i spray basted the quilt front to cotton batting, but because i only had unbleached batting, i put a layer of white cotton in between so that it wouldn't show through. i echo quilted around the heart - i assume i'll eventually get bored with echo quilting, but it won't be any time soon! i love how it looks so much.



i also quilted around the outer border, but then i changed my mind and ripped it all out. so indecisive! i'm so glad that i did rip it out though, i like it much better like this. you can still see the stitch lines, despite my excessive steaming, but i'm going to wash the quilt so that it will shrink up a bit, and the stitch lines will come out then.



i added triangles in the corners for hanging, and bound it in the same fabric that i backed it in, a darker red cotton. i won't show you the back, my binding is terrible! i was rushing, and i was totally struggling with it. i don't know what i did wrong, it's totally uneven. it's fine from the front, but it definitely won't hold up to scrutiny! the quilt ended up being 10.5" x 12", barely squeaking past the 10" x 10" minimum.


so why Ace of Hearts?

hearts was pretty obvious to me, because i love heart imagery, whether it's anatomical hearts, flying hearts, sacred hearts, whatever. i thought about the Ace of Spades, because they're so often the most gorgeous card in the deck, but i wanted to stick with hearts.

i thought about the Two of Hearts, which is used fairly often in a romantic context, but i'm more interested in talking about less-traditional forms of love. in addition to that, i'd already drafted the pattern for this heart for the bee block, and using two of them would have made this quilt much bigger than i wanted it to be.

the Ace of Hearts appealed to me because i truly that think that focusing and working on self-love* is the most radical thing that a person can do. your relationship with yourself is the longest relationship you will ever have, and we live in a culture that continually tells us that we are not good enough. we're not worthy, we're flawed, we don't deserve to have a good life, to be happy, to be loved. we're not smart enough or too smart, not pretty enough or too pretty, too sensitive, or insensitive, we don't have the right kind of body, love, style, job. particularly for people who have been socialized as female, we have been under a barrage of messages from advertising and society since we were so young, and as much as we KNOW that the messages aren't true, they're sneaky, and they stick in our subconscious.

loving yourself can be a lifelong struggle, but it's so important. if you don't love yourself, it's way too easy to let yourself be treated badly. it sounds cheezy, i know, but if you don't feel like you're worth good things, good things don't happen to you. or if they do, you're too busy focusing on the bad things to appreciate them!

so that's why i chose the Ace of Hearts. i'll get off my soapbox now.


plus, the Ace of Hearts card has the letter A on it, and A is for Amy!




if you like my quilt, i'd be ever so happy if you wanted to vote for me! voting for the Most Popular quilt has started, and will be open until Friday 1 June at 10am GMT.

however, the other 13 entries are super freaking awesome, so i totally understand if you vote for one of them instead! ;) i can't even decide on my favourite, they're too amazing!




(can you believe that out of 14 entries, 3 were made by people named amy?)


(*did you snicker when you read that? perv. that's not what i was talking about, but the former sex educator in me feels the need to point out that taking care of your own needs is important too! if you don't know what gets you hot, how can you expect your partner to know?)


also, i'm linking this up to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Whale Love!

hi! welcome!


i'm amy dame.

(there are lots of amys in quilty blog land, aren't there?)

this is the second time i've posted for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, and the quilt that i'm sharing this time around is a little mini quilt that i made for one of my guildie friends. i haven't blogged this before, so i'm including more info than i would just for the quilt festival, so feel free to skim.


if you'd like to know more about me, i'll direct you over to the excessively long about me page, but the basics that that seem to either repel or attract folks are these - i hate capitalization, i swear a lot and babble just as much, i'm a bleeding heart lefty who's hella opinionated, i get distracted kinda easily, and i often get so excited that i bounce up and down and clap my hands like a 6 year old. (if you like me, you might find it endearing, otherwise, it's probably just annoying!)


and most importantly, i love quilting! i'm the secretary of the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild, and i'm a member of the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild. my guilds are amazing. not only are they full of incredibly TALENTED people, they're also full of incredibly AWESOME people!


do you know Sonja? she's pretty much the queen of paperpiecing. her patterns are all super fun, both the ones that she sells in her shop, and the ones that have been published. i've stitched up a few of her blocks, and recently she drafted up a pattern based on our guild logo, and i sewed that one up too.

she's also a fabulous photographer, and takes pictures at all of the VMQG meetings. a few months ago, some of us decided to submit quilts for the Modern Quilt Guild Showcase at the International Quilt Festival, and Sonja very helpfully took pictures of our quilts for us. at the time, i kind of spaced on thanking her properly, so i had it in my head that i should make her a little something. i was thinking pincushion, or needlebook, or pouch, but somehow it turned into an actual quilt!





ever since Sonja updated her blog, Artisania, with a new header, i've been in love with the little whale on it. i think it's part of a future pattern idea of hers (she's too busy designing patterns for books and magazines to finish the ones she's started!), but i just think he's the cutest thing. inspired by the mini-quilt that she made of her freaking adorable fox pattern, i thought two whales would be fun. a friend would keep one from getting lonely, right?

so i drafted up a pattern and sewed up the two whales, and added a little patchwork border around them. i embroidered their faces (twice actually, cause i hated my first attempt and ripped it out, i'd used too many strands of floss) and the little hearts between them. aren't they sweet?





i'm so happy with the water!! i was so proud of myself when it occurred to me how i was going to show the waves like Sonja's header does, without resorting to raw edge applique. when i showed this at guild last week, i said that it was a variation on cathedral windows, but i'm not sure anyone knew what the hell i was talking about.

basically, you start with strip of fabric that's got the top folded over by an inch or two. you tack the fabric down in multiple spots, and then curve the fabric between each spot down, pulling the fold into a wave shape. with cathedral windows, you're tacking down the corners, and then curving the fabric between them, right? so therefore this is a variation of cathedral windows.

well, in my head it is. that's amy-logic for you. i have just spent a ridiculous amount of time googling for faux cathedral windows quilts and haven't found what i'm looking for, or even as much info on the other kind of faux , cathedral windows, which is surprising, really. apparently i fail at google!

this is actually the closest i can find to explain what the hell i did - Tamiko at Patchwork Notes Hoo-Ha Pouch Tutorial, except that i just did one row, and i removed the straight lines of stitching. (as a sidenote, i just came across that pouch a week or two ago and damn, isn't it gorgeous? i'm slightly obsessed at the moment!)

i'm not quite as happy with my hearts. i was trying to make them look casual, freehand, less precise than i tend to do, but i think they might have just turned out a little bit wonky looking. hm.





i enjoyed echo quilting on the white, and really loved the contrast of the chevron like quilting around the whales with the curves around the hearts.

the water was quilted with four or five colours of blue thread, just freehand curves.

i used a synthetic batting, because it was the only pure white batting i had in my stash and i didn't want the cream colour of my cotton batting to show through the background. it was a bit puffier than the batting i usually use, so it added a bit more texture, which was fun.





the backing was this pretty print, and i included two hanging triangles in the upper corners. i didn't backstitch at all while i was quilting, because it would've shown a lot on a quilt this tiny, so i was VERY thankful for Krista's self-threading needle tutorial! this picture only shows the threads from when i went back in and added the quilting around the hearts, so you can imagine how many there were overall!


so! what do you think? it's a bit of a departure from the sorts of things i usually sew, but it was so much fun to do! i'm not sure if it's considered a wall hanging or a mini quilt for the new categories that have been added this time around. opinions? have you been keeping your list of quilts to nominate, as you've been surfing around?

i hope you've enjoyed the Blogger's Quilt Festival! as i click post, there are 28 minutes left to enter (i'm a master procrastinator), and 620 entries! that's amazing! be sure to pop over and say a huge THANK YOU to Amy for all of her hard work coordinating this!