Have a Heart

Welcome to my Blogger's Quilt Festival post!  I am sharing the quilt I made for my husband to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary....which was yesterday actually!

30th anniversary quilt

Other than the thinking, planning, designing and ordering fabric which I did a while back, this quilt came together start to finish rather quickly.  This was only because I completely lost track of time procrastinated and only had two weeks to get it done!

lots and lots of triangles

The quilt design was inspired by a Pandora jewelry display seen around Valentine's Day, and I imagined a quilt with a lot of negative space with half square triangles going this way and that to form a rough outline of the heart shape and tapering off so to speak.

Yay...no trimming!

Since my wrist isn't healing as quickly as I think it should, I worked the pattern around the Accuquilt Go! die I have for half square triangles. That sure cut down on the cutting and trimming time.  My HSTs came out a perfect 3.5" square.  Just wish I had that 3.5" square die in my possession for the 300+ squares I cut.   It's now on my "To Buy" list.

cutting squares the "old fashioned" way!

The fabrics in this quilt are almost entirely solids, and I used a very scientific method for selecting those colors ;-)  Pearl is the traditional gift material for the 30th wedding anniversary, according to the experts at Google, so I went with Kona Pearl Pink for the background color.  Other Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton Solids I ordered were chosen (within the pinks, reds and grays) because of their names including Valentine, Azalea, Pomegranate, Lipstick, Rich Red, Camelia, Peony, Flesh, Plum, Silver and Graphite.  I also used some solids in the red and pink family from the Michael Miller Cotton Couture charm pack gifted at SewDown Nashville. The few prints used are from a Pink Chalk bundle aptly named Passion Pink.

My Flatter spray matches the scientifically chosen colors!

I really like the pale pink color for the background.  I was worried about using a pink color since it's theoretically for my husband, but you really can't tell it's pink unless you look closely or at a certain angle.  And the heart shape isn't really apparent either unless you spread the quilt out.  I just like the scattering of various HSTs in arrangements of flying geese, pinwheels, hourglass blocks, and then it's a nice surprise when you see the heart.  So I don't think it's too girly.  The backing fabric used is a light gray, Kona Cotton Silver, to make up for the pink front ;-) 

where the heck am I gonna baste this?!

The quilt finishes at 78" square which is a rather large size for me to quilt on my home machine since FMQing and I aren't good friends, but I managed.  I had issues with thread breakage but after a while decided it was due to the bulky seams in certain areas of HSTs and then I was able to work around that.

an outside picture

For quilting, I used Aurifil thread color #2410.  I usually use the 50wt but tried the 40wt this time which I like for this type of project.  The quilting was done on my Juki with various FMQ styles trying to remember everything I learned at SewDown in Angela's class;-)  The center of the heart was done in meandering loops and circles.  I quilted different designs on the HSTs and background ..... some more perfect than others.... sort of like life and marriage.  I even, purposely, left some areas unquilted to represent years and experiences yet to come.  I left mistakes in...some points not exactly perfect...quilting definitely not perfect....again representing the ups and downs of everyday life.  I also designed the heart to be off center a little to the left... I like that rather than smack dab in the middle.  I actually meant to have it more off center but the quilt was getting rather large so I stopped where I was;-)

pieced heart for the backing and label

I quickly took pictures for this post and realized I didn't get all that I wanted.  For example, I quilted our names and anniversary date near the bottom of the quilt and the word "love" here and there in the quilt to serve as a permanent label in the addition to the pieced heart I stitched on the back for a label.

does anyone else do this...iron back their binding after machine stitching on and before hand stitching to the back?

stitching with a view

This quilt was finished just in the nick of time.  My husband and I went away this past weekend and the quilt went along too.  I was able to do some stitching of the binding while relaxing by the pool, and I finished hand stitching the binding on yesterday while watching movies on Netflix. When my husband came home from work, I was able to give him our anniversary quilt on our anniversary!

closeup of quilting

My very first Blogger's Quilt Festival entry was of the quilt I made to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.  Doesn't seem that long ago.  You can see that post and quilt here if you'd like.

30 years ago I married my best friend

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading my quilt story!!  I hope you take a minute to leave me a comment to let me know you stopped by.

Have a Heart

Quilt Stats:  Have a Heart, original design, pieced and quilted by yours truly, 78" square, RK Kona Cotton solids and several prints (details in blog post), binding Robert Kaufman Ruff n' Tuff, Aurifil #2410 40wt thread

Be sure to visit the other quilt blogs participating in Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Happy stitching,