Be My Valentine Quilt Part 2

Last week I showed you how to piece a quilt top in a simple design using 3-1/2" squares and wide strips to make the front of this little quilt. If you missed that, you can find it here. This week I'm going to talk about how to finish the "Be My Valentine" quilt.

Now what makes a quilt a quilt is the fact that it has three layers: the top (usually pieced), a middle (made up of batting usually, though in the old days, quilters were known to use rags or pieces of cotton) and a bottom (usually a solid piece of fabric, though it could also be pieced). What makes the "Be My Valentine" quilt special are the heart appliques all over the front.

To make these appliques, I took some scrap felt in a color I liked and used a scrapbooking stencil to trace out the smaller hearts and a slightly larger heart-shaped notepad to trace out the bigger hearts. You can use whatever you have on hand or just freehand a heart if you're confident enough. 😉
I played around with the placement a bit, but eventually decided to stagger the smaller hearts row by row and put the larger hearts in the corners.

I pinned them in place and then used a blanket stitch to sew them on. (If you're not sure how to do a blanket stitch, check out my blog on name blocks here; it explains how to do it.) As I've said before, I like using felt for appliques because you don't have to worry about turning the edges under to keep them from unraveling, so it's just less fuss. Plus, I like the variety of textures!

As you can see from this picture, my cat took a decided interest in this process!😄

Once all the appliques were sewn in place, it was time to baste my three quilt layers together in preparation for quilting. There are several different ways to do this. You can sew very long lines across the quilt through all three layers corner to corner and side to side to secure everything until it's been quilted and then snip the basting threads and pull them out. Another way is to tack the quilt every 6" or so with small X's and then remove them as well once the quilt is sewn. My preferred method is to use safety pins every 6" or so through all three layers--they're quicker to place and easy to move around as needed. Whatever method you choose, assembling the layers is essentially the same.

I first laid down my quilt top on my dining room table (my preferred fabric cutting station, though I have used the bed before for really large quilts), unrolled the batting and cut it to size. My design called for the back of the quilt to come around onto the front and create a 2" wide border around the edge of the quilt, so I cut the batting two extra inches wider than the quilt top all the way around.

I then moved those pieces, placed the quilt back, wrong side up, on the table and centered first the batting, then the pieced top on top and pinned it all together using my safety pins. Now I was ready to quilt!

Quilting something is actually extremely easy to do. Whenever I mention that I love to quilt, people are always like, "Wow! That's so difficult!", but it's really not. To quilt anything by hand you use a running stitch, and that is the easiest sewing stitch you can imagine. Here's a diagram (pay attention to the first picture, not the second 😊):

First you draw out the design of whatever you're going to quilt. For the middle, I simply used a ruler and my chalk pencil to draw diagonal lines across all the squares creating a criss-cross pattern. When I was ready to do the borders, I used the smaller heart pattern I had previously used for the small applique hearts to trace hearts where I wanted them, then drew curlicue vines to connect them with the larger hearts in the corners. I also quilted all around the edge of the middle panel and around the edges of the two borders, but more on that later.

Whatever you decide to quilt, it's important to always quilt from the middle outward, as this prevents any bunching or wrinkles in your quilt. Use a large embroidery hoop to hold the area you're working on taut; this will produce a nice even texture to your finished quilt. Try to keep your stitches even; don't worry about making them super small--consistency in stitch size is more important. Your stitches will get smaller as you practice more, but stitches of all different sizes will make a quilt look a little sloppy and possibly even create big holes in your design, and nobody wants that! Strive for consistency, and you won't be sorry!

To start your quilting, tie a small knot in the end of your thread on your needle. I like to cut about two arm lengths of thread, then double it on the needle and tie my knot at the end, joining the ends together. My reasoning is that two strands are better than one. Poke your needle into the beginning of wherever you're planning on starting and very carefully pull it all the way through the top, into the middle and out the top again--do not go through the bottom! Pull your thread all the way through until the knot is flush against the fabric, then with a gentle tug, pull the knot into the middle of the quilt. Don't pull too hard, or it will come out the other end, and you'll have to start all over again. The goal is for the knot to be locked inside the batting of the quilt, so that your quilting design has no perceivable beginning or end--it just is. If your fabric is really thin and your knot keeps popping free, you can try somewhere else or start it at a seam in the piecing--it's much harder for the knot to pop out through a seam.

To finish off a stitch when you're at the end of your thread and ready to rethread your needle, simply do the same in reverse: tie a knot about 1/4"from the quilt and then pull the needle through the top, middle, top again, pulling the knot into the middle batting. Cut your thread flush with the fabric where it came out and rethread your needle to continue quilting.

And now it's just a matter of sitting down and quilting your design until the project is done. I like to quilt in the evenings when I'm watching TV with my husband after the kids are in bed, but if I'm making a quilt for a particular deadline, as this one was, I'll often put aside all other housework until the project is finished and work on it throughout the day. I finished the quilting on this small blanket in about a week.

Once I had finished quilting the middle and the white inner border, it was time to pin and sew the red outer border in place. To attach it to the front of the quilt I used a blind stitch, so called because, if done correctly, it's invisible to all but the closest examination. To sew a blind stitch, you come up with your needle through the edge of your binding (or border, or whatever), catch a thread or two of the other fabric you are sewing to and go back inside your first fabric to make the next stitch.

It's a really useful stitch for anytime when you don't want anyone to see how you joined the two pieces together. It actually goes pretty quickly, too. When I got to the corners, I just folded the corner down to make it squared off and then blind-stitched all around the open edge and continued on down to the next corner.

Once the outer border was sewn in place, I put the quilt in my embroidery hoop again and quilted around the inner and outer edge of this border as well. This just produced a much more harmonious, finished product, and I was really happy with how the whole project came out. My whole family fell in love with this quilt and tried to persuade me to keep it, but I had designed it with a particular goal in mind, and I wasn't about to go back on my decision.

Every year, the child advocacy center in our county holds a big fundraiser in which they invite local businesses and artisans to donate items or services to be auctioned off to support their ministry. If you're not familiar with child advocacy centers, let me explain. Normally, when a child has been the victim of a crime, whether physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, etc., they have to be interviewed by a lot of different people--the police investigating the case, the forensics people, the lawyers prosecuting and defending, etc, etc. It makes a horrible ordeal for a victimized child even more traumatic and stressful as he or she is forced to tell their story over and over to many different people, often in less-than-friendly places.

Butterfly Bridge Child Advocacy Center seeks to alleviate that stress by working with the child and the criminal justice system for the good of all. Trained forensic interviewers question the child one time in a safe, friendly environment and then share their findings with the court system. The abused child doesn't have to relive his or her experience multiple times, and justice is served. It has been my pleasure to make something every year for their auction, and this year I was inspired to make this quilt for them to sell.

With that in mind, I made a label for the back of my quilt from some scrap fabric and a ballpoint pen, so that whoever bought it would know who made it and when, etc.

Once it was sewn on, I washed it in my washing machine. Handsewn quilts can be machine-washed on delicate cycle, cold water, and it's a great opportunity to check all my stitches to see if they held or need a little more work and to wash that green chalk off. Admittedly, it looked a little weird once the quilting was done! 😄 Then it was time to deliver the quilt--just in time for the auction! Here I am giving the quilt to Erin Ward, one of the forensic interviewers and therapists at Butterfly Bridge.

Whatever you use your quilt for, I hope it brings love and joy to its recipients, too!