Fabric, love and fabric love

A couple of days ago, I wrote about healing hearts blocks. Since then a funny thing has happened. 

Annie, my friend in Melbourne is the person responsible for introducing me to quilting. I fell in love with the beautiful baby quilts her mum made her son when he was younger and so I wanted to learn how to make my own. 

Annie and her mum Barbara, a very accomplished quilter who has made some stunning quilts so far are also the people who guided me through my early foray into quilting by leading me astray into my fabric addiction...I mean...by offering gentle encouragement and kind advice. They also happen to be the ladies responsible for introducing me to the Southern Cross Quilters online guild and without them, I wouldn't know what a healing heart block is let alone half the things I have learnt since about quilting.

So I was very touched when Anne offered to make a heart block for Pip's quilt and I promised to send a patch of background fabric to her in the mail. While i was cutting all the background fabric into size this weekend, I cut up a block for Anne too. 

It was a lovely surprise when I asked Anne for her mailing address and got a response asking if she could pick it up in person since she was up from Melbourne visiting family. We arranged to meet for morning tea at Barbara's place today and I had a lovely time catching up, admiring Barbara's latest quilts and talking quilty with them.

Before I left, Barbara pulled bits out of her very impressive stash and offered me some fabric for Pip's quilt! Quilters are usually a very generous and caring bunch, but I was very touched by the offer because it's a special privilege to be allowed to pick pieces from a quilter's personal stash. It's amazing how this project which started off with a simple idea of remembrance has also now played a role in reconnecting me with the very people who started my love of quilting! Talk about coming full circle. 

We sat on the bed and looked through all the different fabrics and colours. In the end, I decided on a yellow fabric which I'm thinking I will use for the star blocks even though I already had another yellow fabric in mind. The yellow fabric has little multi-coloured hearts through it which match the ice cream colours of the quilt so far. I also loved an aqua fabric, also with tiny purple hearts because aqua is the birthstone for March (Pip's estimated due date) and a patch of gorgeous sun and moon fabric which I'm not sure how I will incorporate in yet. 

It's also funny that I was toying with the idea of doing a shooting star block (to symbolise hopes and wishes) instead of a standard star block I'd originally thought of to symbolise hope. The colours in the yellow fabric could easily be drawn out with other fabrics to make the trail of the shooting star and as Barbara suggested, the blue would make a nice border also. 

Before I left, I asked Barbara if she would like to make a heart patch for Pip's quilt and she said yes. She even offered to do needle-turn work (which she hates) if I wanted! Now if that's not love, I don't know what is.

Thank you so much for your contribution to Pip's quilt Anne and Barbara. I can't wait to see your blocks and who would have thought that your quilty influence would someday give me the skills I have learnt from you and since to help me heal a broken heart.

Prep and math

Almost this whole weekend was devoted exclusively to Pip's quilt. My mum's comment on my industrious streak - "If you keep going at this rate, you'll have it finished by Christmas!" may be a bit ambitious, but I'm very proud of how much I got done.

It feels like 80% of what I've been doing up to this point has been prep work. When I sat down and drafted the heart blocks and quilt layout the sums so far worked out as follows:

• 9 x embroidered blocks
• 8 x heart blocks
• 4 x star blocks
• 16 x apple pip fabric blocks
• 12 x 9 patch blocks (hmm...still wondering if this will work)
• All this surrounded by 2 or possibly 3 borders (See what I mean about the quilt's design changing on the fly?) 

So most of the weekend was spent chopping fabric up into patches. All the apple fabric blocks are now ready to go, the background fabric for the heart and star blocks cut and as of last night, the appliqued angel hearts have been vlisoflex-ed on. Vlisoflex is a double sided fusible magical creation that you iron on to hold applique in place until you've stitched it in place. Think double sided tape for fabric!

Each heart has 2 wings, each side of the wing has 3 pieces. So 6 different pieces for the wings alone, per block. I was determined to get the heart blocks ready for stitching if I could by last night, so I worked late into the night laying each piece out so that I could fiddle with arrangements and colours before I settled on the final arrangement. 

Even though in my sketch the hearts are red, in the end I chose a rainbow fabric I found in my fabric stash because it's so pretty and because it's a reference to rainbow babies. This is how Urban dictionary describes what a rainbow baby is: 

A "rainbow baby" is a baby that is born following a miscarriage or still birth.

In the real world, a beautiful and bright rainbow follows a storm and gives hope of things getting better. The rainbow is more appreciated having just experienced the storm in comparison.

The storm (pregnancy loss) has already happened and nothing can change that experience. Storm-clouds might still be overhead as the family continue to cope with the loss, but something colourful and bright has emerged from the darkness and misery.

"We lost our last pregnancy, but now we have a rainbow baby."

Someday when the universe sees fit, we would love to have a precious little baby to love, whether it is Pip returning to us transformed, or a brother or sister to love, the thought of a rainbow baby has a touch of magic to it.

So after fiddling with it some more, I finally decided on a final layout and ironed it all on. 

Excuse the awful overhead lighting, but I couldn't wait till morning to take a photo. I even managed to find a cute pink fabric that had silver glitter all through it (top part of the wings in the heart block pictured below). As my friend Nat said, every little princess deserves a little bit of bling! (even if Pip's bling is woven into the fabric of her quilt).

So here's a line up of the blocks so far. 

I'm quite happy with the way the colours are working together. Can't wait to get started on the blanket stitching on the heart applique. Hopefully the stitches will outline the different fabrics more.

According to the current plan, there are a grand total of 49 blocks in the middle. Which will be surrounded by 2 (possibly 3) borders and finished off with the binding.

Current count of blocks ready to be pieced into the top 17. 

32 blocks to go!!!

The heart block

The design for the heart block has been marinating in the think tank for a while. I agonise over every detail of this quilt because it has to be just right. Normally when I make and design a quilt, things happen on the fly. I trust my design intuition to guide me in the right direction and usually just work from a rough sketch that guides me from the start. I've never redesigned a quilt as many times as I have with this one though!

I know I want a heart with wings for the heart blocks. But even the direction of the wings was something I thought long and hard over. At first I thought I wanted the wings to face downwards, but a few weeks ago found that I was inspired to have it facing upwards instead. It's just a tiny detail, but to me the way the wings look and face really make a difference to the emotion behind the graphic. 

That day on the beach when I wrote Pip's name on the sand along with her other angel baby friends, I also doodled a rough sketch of an angel heart and really liked how it looked. 

Today I finally finished the embroidery for the second embroidered patch. Work has been keeping me very busy and I don't want to work on it when I'm exhausted because the chances of making silly mistakes usually grows exponentially by the minute.

Then I started thinking about what the whole quilt will look like and decided to make some changes, so I drafted a mini projection of what the whole quilt may look like when it's done. I say "may" because it's already been through about 20 changes. Insert colours and I'm liking the way it's coming together. 

Finally after spending the better part of this evening doodling hearts on scrap paper and after many corrections, I think I'm finally approaching satisfied on what it looks like on the mock paper block. The sketch of the quilt is also a bit off in dimensions. The finished quilt should turn out to be shorter in width and hopefully long enough to cover the cuddlee's lap and legs.

As much as I am enjoying the hand embroidery, I can't wait to get started on a heart block now. Hopefully the turn around time for the heart blocks will also be a lot quicker!

Healing heart blocks

A few years ago I became a member of the Southern Cross Quilters online guild. One thing I have always loved about the group is a running project they've got going called "healing hearts". 

The idea is that whenever someone is going through a hard time, a call for heart blocks is posted on the list and anyone who wants to send a block then does so. The design is usually a heart or combination of hearts on a plain coloured background. It's not unusual for the person to receive blocks from strangers who just want to show that they care.

So there I was working on the embroidery for pip's second block when I started thinking about my girl and wondering what she was up to on a day like this. I've often wondered if my angel baby was playing with the other angel babies I know. Which got me thinking about a very special little boy. If you have a moment, do pop by and visit Nat's blog about her beloved Sebastian Levi. I don't think I'll ever forget how even in the midst of her own devastating loss, Nat reached out to me and linked me in with a beautiful group of angel mums - something I am thankful everyday for.

I'd heard through her posts that a friend was working on a memorial quilt for Sebby which got me thinking about the healing hearts blocks and whether I could send one for Seb. So I got on to Nat and asked if she'd like one. With dimensions (which I eventually got wrong - Sorry Nat!), colours and an idea of what the rest of the quilt looked like, I was so excited to be able to send a patch for Sebastian's quilt. 

It was a slight race against time because we were going away for a short break and Nat was moving house before we were due back from our holiday, so the block had to make it to her within the week. So now all I needed was an idea for a design!

I said a little prayer, "God, I've opened my big mouth and asked to make a block, please guide me!" lol So off I went to Lincraft - a local craft store that sells a range of sewing supplies to see what I could find. I knew that at her baby shower, Nat's friends had decorated blocks with ribbons and buttons, so I was looking to see if I could find anything special to put on. In particular I was looking for something crabby!

You're probably thinking, why a crab? Well, if you're familiar with the Disney cartoon, The Little Mermaid, you'll probably remember the character of Sebastian the crab. When Nat and her husband chose Sebastian's name, they likened it to Disney's Sebastian so that their children could have a point of reference for his name. The rest is history and Seb's "symbol" soon became a red crab. 

So now I had hearts and a red crab. And I was looking for a button or something that would fit. There were plenty of red heart buttons but nothing really seemed perfect. So I walked around for hours in the shopping centre until finally I came to a craft store that I normally would have overlooked because it doesn't supply sewing materials. I don't know why I went in there knowing they don't supply sewing materials, but I'm so glad I did because in their scrapbooking section I found a bag of alphabetical beads. Close enough to buttons! I'd love to "write" something on Seb's block, but I didn't have enough time to embroider it, so I figured that this would be a great way to put my message on.

At home, I looked up images of stylized crabs and eventually came up with my design of a crab using hearts and buttons. Hours of tiny blanket stitches later and the result is as you see below: 

(Sorry Nat, had to pinch your photo as I rushed to post it and forgot to take some of my own pictures before I popped it in the mail! Oops!)

Thank you for allowing me the pleasure of contributing something towards Seb's quilt, Nat. I can't wait to see what happens with the rest of the story!

Design

While waiting for the fabrics to arrive, I'm wondering how I'm going to make this quilt work. The primary fabric will be the apples with the pips, but each one I have chosen has a special meaning and I want them all to have their place in it without looking like a psychadelic mess.

I'm also thinking about what the quilt top will look like as a whole. I do like patchwork, but I want to do more than just machine piecing. The plan is for it to be hand quilted, but that's jumping ahead a bit. So handwork may mean a bit of hand applique in the quilt top perhaps.

I like that idea. The most obvious choice is a heart-shaped applique pattern on a block. But that doesn't seem enough. A heart for love, so maybe a heart with wings for love lost? That could work. I like the look of this little doodle, maybe for the quilt it will need to be a bit longer, depending on the size of the blocks. Maybe some stars too, for hope.















I don't want to go too crazy with the patchwork because the fabrics have so much character. I think I will stick with a simple nine patch design around the appliqued blocks. Perhaps a border or two after that, depending on the size it already is and that should give me a lap sized quilt at the very least.