Pixelated Heart

Happy New Year!

I figured it would probably be best if I shared my final finish of 2013 before we move on to 2014. Meet the Pixelated Heart Quilt.

I had a lot of fun making this quilt, mostly because I was excited to have the time to sew a gift this Christmas and because the Happy-Go-Lucky fabrics from Bonnie and Camille are just so cheerful. The pattern is by Jolene of Blue Elephant Stitches. I had seen her smaller version and loved it - such a great use of saturated and low-volume prints.

I made a larger version of the quilt that is available as a free pattern on the Robert Kaufman site. The pattern is well-written and easy to follow. I didn't follow the cutting instructions completely. Because I wanted to use a solid background (Kona Snow), I got out the graph paper and did some extra math to figure out how I could cut larger pieces of the white instead of 155 5-inch squares. I knew it would look better without all the seams and would save time cutting and sewing. I'm not sure if it saved fabric or not - I didn't really check that. You should also note that the pattern says the finished quilt is 75" x 75" and that isn't the case if you use  5" squares (4.5" finished) - it's 67.5" x 67.5".

Piexelated heart 2

For the quilting, I free-motioned flowers in an off-white thread using Rachel's tutorial for chrysanthemum quilting. I loved doing the actual quilting and I am really happy with the texture it gave the quilt. It was fun to fill in the negative space with flowers of different sizes - I even quilted the recipient's name in one spot. I didn't get many photos of the finished quilt (rushing to get it in the mail!), but I think you can see the quilting here well enough. The quilt back is a solid green (it's a Moda Bella Solid - not sure of the exact color) and the binding is more Kona Snow.

I've got two other, much smaller gifts to share and then it is on to the 2014 sewing. I've already started cutting two quilts!