heart quilt | WOMBAT QUILTS

Yesterday I shared the group Quilt for Pulse we made… today I am sharing my the quilt I also made for the cause. I had actually started making this quilt when we decided to make a group quilt.

For my quilt I used some more of my pre-cut solid squares, but worked with my 3 inch stash this time… I have a lot of pre-cut squares and both of these projects did not even start to dent my pile!

I played around on my design wall to find a heart shape that I liked and then went to work making these blocks in a rainbow assortment of colours.

I made sure there was a good mix of lights and darks in each heart and used a variety of whites and creams in the background. For the background I also threw in some pastel pinks, purples, greens and blues but I made sure I did not put the pastels right next to the heart so that there was clear definition to the heart shape.

I also quilted this quilt on Modern Domestic’s Q24 longarm… I quilted this one after I had done the huge heart so I was over loopy hearts and went instead for straight line boxes. It was nice to do something more structured on this quilt.

I think I am going to revisit this block. It was easy and really effective…plus I still have shoe boxes full of 3 inch solid squares!

This week I managed to finish up two very special quilts. If you are a member of the Modern Quilt Guild you may have heard of the Quilts for Pulse drive. After the tragic shooting in June at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida a member of the Orland Modern Quilt Guild, Alissa Lapinsky put out a call for rainbow heart blocks. She wanted to make quilts for families of the victims.

The call for help from Alissa gave me, and some of my friends, the opportunity to do something in a situation where you usually feel as if there is nothing you can do to help. So one weekend in June Lisa, Sara, Kristie and I got together and made a quilt…

I had a tonne of pre-cut 5 inch squares in hundreds of different colours – I am getting in the habit of cutting my scraps into usable sizes and had just cut a pile of my solid scraps into squares. So we sorted the squares into colour order and started playing. The end result looked like this…

We pieced this beautiful top, working together, in a day. It was so much fun to make this top with friends and it was so good to do something positive in the days following the tragedy. It then took me a little while to get it on the long arm at Modern Domestic.

This was the biggest quilt I had every long armed and I must admit I got a little crazy somewhere in the middle of it… my hearts got a little loopy but the overall effect is not too bad.

I went with a pieced black and white quilt back to counteract the bright loud front of the quilt…

The three sets of feet you can see under the quilt are our husbands. The boys helped hold the quilt while we photographed it…. and as one of those boys is over 6 foot it gives you an idea of how big the quilt finished up.

We finished the quilt off with a label from Story Patches, who kindly donated labels to many quilters making Pulse Quilts. I had not used one of these patches before but it was perfect for this quilt. If you have not seen Story Patches they allow you to download message about your quilt using photos, audio and/or video. There is a QR code on the label that can be scanned so the receiver of the quilt can see the story behind making the quilt. We downloaded a message and some photos of the day we spent making the quilt.

This quilt has now joined the hundreds of other quilts and blocks that have been sent to Orlando. I doubt that Alissa knew that she would get the amazing response she did. Thanks to efforts of the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild, the quilting community has flooded Orlando with love, support and quilts.