Scrappy Heart Quilt

This is a quilt top I made using some of the left over fabric from last year's Moda quilt.  I had an idea for a quilt made from a jelly roll that involves stripes and hearts.  I wanted to try out the heart block first on some scrap fabric before I started on the actual project with my jelly roll.  The project will use all of the jelly roll strips so there is really no room for trial and error there.  This isn't the same pattern as the hearts and stripes quilt, but it uses the same heart block.  Because, you know, once I had made the trial run heart block, I had to use it in something.

"Baby Blocks" Christmas Star

Here is the finished quilt top from the previous post.  I made a slightly narrower border than what the pattern called for, because it fit the width of my fabric better.  I didn't want seams in my border and the border fabric I was using was not 42-1/2 inches wide, it was only 41 inches (not including selvages).

The quilt top is 40-1/2 inches square.  Plus it will fit better onto the backing fabric as well.  I will still have a problem if I decide to have it long arm quilted, but I will probably quilt it myself, either on my regular machine or by hand.  I'm still deciding on that part.

Scrappy pot holder

I needed something to work on today, so I made this scrappy little pot holder.  It is made from cut-away corners on my Moda quilt from last year.

I saved a lot of cut off corners from that quilt.  I'm not sure what all I will end up doing with the rest of them.

Christmas Baby Quilt

I decided to make a Christmas quilt for my baby granddaughter for her first Christmas.  I saw the "Baby Blocks" quilt in the most recent issue of BLOCK magazine, from Missouri Star Quilt Company, and decided to give it a try. 

My problem with the pattern, as it is presented in both the magazine and the tutorial, is that the directions that they give don't actually produce the quilt that they show in the pictures.  The instructions say to use 4 jellyroll (2-1/2 inch) strips of fabrics to make one single strip set.  Cut 16 2-1/2 inch strips from the strip set and use them to create the four blocks that make up the center of the star.  The pictures used in the magazine and on the tutorial use way more than just 4 fabrics in the center.  That makes for a different look in the finished quilt. 

I decided to make the quilt following the actual directions given.  I used two red fabrics and two green fabrics to make the strip set, alternating the red and green in the strip set.  The pictures below show the basic options I came up with for the center of the star using the blocks that one strip set would actually create.  (I am sure there are a few others that I didn't think of.)

 Four blocks with green corners oriented toward the center.

 Four blocks with each block oriented in the same direction.

Four blocks with the red corners oriented toward the center.

I like the look of the red corners oriented toward the center, so that is the layout that I decided to go with.  I am still working on getting it sewn together, and it still needs a border, but I thought I would share these layouts in case anyone else was interested in what it would look like actually following the directions.