Have a Heart Argyle Valentine Pillow Tutorial

What can I say, I have an unhealthy obsession with argyle.  Last year I made a Valentine's wall hanging and table topper so this year I thought some pillows were in order.  In the spirit of sharing the love, here's a how-to in case you want to make your own.

Cut the following:

(1) strip 3" x wof gray
(1) strip 3" x wof navy
(1) strip 6" x wof pink
(1) 12" x 19" batting scrap

(1) 11" x 6 1/2" rectangle gray for back

(1) 11" x 12 1/2" rectangle gray for back
(2) strips 2" x wof navy for binding

Other supplies:

This heart template or draw your own hearts
Quilter's Freezer Paper Sheets


Seam allowance 1/4"

Making the Pillow Front

Sew your your navy and gray strips together to make a strip set.  Press towards the navy.
 

Trim the end of your strip set using the 30° line on your ruler.

Cut your strip set into 3" pieces cutting parallel to your initial cut.  You will need 6 of these to make your diamonds.

Sew two pieces together to make a diamond.  You need to offset the ends by 1/4" and the center seam will not nest like it would when piecing squares.  This takes a little practice, check out from the blue chair for some more helpful tips.   The good news is your center intersection doesn't have to be perfect since your hearts will cover them: )

Sew your remaining pairs together so you have three diamonds.  I pressed towards the gray so the center point was open to reduce bulk.

Trim the end of your 6" pink strip using the 30° line as we did before.  This time turn your ruler placing the 30° line on your cut edge and cut an isosceles triangle (all the sides are equal).  Turn and repeat so you have 4 of these triangles.  My strip was folded in half so I got 2 from each cut.

For my corners I used my existing 30° cut and moved over 1/4" and then cut straight down the side (makes 2). 

For the remaining two I used the ones I just cut as a template.  If this seems to complicated you can just cut 4 more full triangles and trim them down at the end.  You can NOT make 1 triangle and cut it in half, it will be 1/4" too small.  Trust me!

Sew together your rows and then join the rows to complete your top.

At this point I layered my top with batting and quilted it.  You don't need a backing since this will be the inside of your pillow but you can certainly add one if you like.  I used a hera marking tool to draw lines 1 1/4" from my seam lines to complete the argyle motif and quilted it with pale pink thread. 

This is my scruffy applique method, feel free to use your favorite applique technique.  I printed this heart template on to quilter's freezer paper and roughly cut out the shapes.  With what was left of my 6" pink strip I cut a 2" strip for the back of my pillow and then was able to iron the four hearts on the remaining piece. 

Cut out the hearts on the outside line and arrange them on your argyle front.  Sew on the inside line to attach your hearts to the top.  I shorten my stitch length to make it easier to sew the curves and to perforate the paper.  Very carefully remove the freezer paper from your hearts.  Trim your top to 11" x 18".

Making the Pillow Back

Finish one long side of the 6 1/2" x 11" piece by folding the edge over 1/4" then again and top stitching near the edge.  I added a pink band to the edge of the 12 1/2" x 11" piece.  Fold the pink 2" strip in half and sew it to one of the 11" sides.  Top stitch if desired.  If you'd like to add a label to the back of your pillow you should also do that now.  I used my extra heart here.

Layer your pieces with the pillow top right side down and the back pieces right side up with the backing pieces overlapping.  I sewed around the 4 sides with a narrow zigzag to make it easier to bind but pins are fine.  Sew together your two 2" strips of navy, fold in half and apply your binding.  Riley Blake has a great demo of my favorite way to applying binding.

Insert a 12"x18" pillow form or make your own using this tutorial from Piece N Quilt.

Make another one because you're having so much fun;-)

Props to Aneela Hoey

I don't usually acknowledge the fabric designer on my quilts but in this case it seemed like a good idea.  I was happily tacking down the binding on this quilt when I got to this corner...

As my son said, "Oopsies for you!"  Indeed, another joy of quilting moment!!! 

One of the "challenges" of zigzag quilts made with this method is they are all bias and bias stretches...  in this case, right past my backing: (  Or maybe it was a basting failure.  No matter the cause, I had a gap between my backing and binding to deal with.  Had I thought of it sooner I might have made my binding wider.  Instead, some strategically applied selvedge to the rescue!  Twenty years of quilting hasn't taught me how not to make mistakes but I have learned to handle them gracefully; )

In a bind

This week I've been making binding, by the mile!  Now I've got these sewn on to my quilts and I'm actually looking forward to the Super Bowl this year.  Not because the Patriots are playing, because it means I'll have 3 hours to snuggle up on the couch and tack down these binding: )  As an added bonus, keeping my hands busy sewing will keep me from stuffing my face with snacks. 

Finished quilts on the way, now that's something to cheer about!

Short attention span quilting

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that I vastly prefer piecing to quilting and as much as I LOVE zig-zags, quilting them is the worst!  Pivoting every 5" you can never get in to a good rhythm so I'm just taking this one line at a time.  Every time I finish a row I take a break.  It's all set up and ready to go so anytime I have a few minutes to spare I can sit down and make a little more progress.  It feels like it'll take forever to get done but on the upside my studio is getting cleaned up; )

Quilting the Beast

It takes a looong time to quilt a queen sized quilt, even on a longarm.  I spent all day quilting this at Laurena's but the sore muscles are definitely worth it.  I LOVE how this came out! 

I used a simple pantograph with tulips and leaves which had the airy look I was going for.  This was a much easier pattern than the spider web insanity I did on my last quilt but I had to do 12 rows of it and each one was taking me about 20 minutes.  It's fun for about the first 2 hours, then it just gets tedious... luckily Jack Johnson is my quilting buddy which helps the time pass more quickly;-)  Rainy day here in New England so it's perfect for making binding... all 400" of it!

Ready to quilt

I've been making even more HSTs, this time for the back of my Fig Tree quilt.  I finished the top back in August but couldn't muster up the motivation to piece the back.  This quilt is big, 88"x96" so it wouldn't be enough to just seam two lengths of fabric together.  I put this zigzag down the middle to give it the extra width and so I don't have to worry about matching the pattern.

In the interest of finishing it this year I decided to go ahead and quilt it on the longarm.  My TBQ pile is already out of control and I can't bear the thought of trying to wrestle this through my home machine.  If I was having any doubts about this decision reading about the hilarious Liz of Goddess in Progress "joy of quilting" moments with her beautiful version of this quilt sealed the deal.  I can't wait to see mine finished!!!

Transformed

This month's BMQG meeting was a workshop using the Twister rulers.  The plan was for everyone to bring a top ready to cut and the amazing Aimee would demo how to use the rulers.  I've already made a Valentine quilt using the Lil' Twister ruler so this was a good time to put the bigger version to use.

I stopped in at Quilter's Way and nabbed this new layer cake of hello luscious by basic grey and some red FSDS for the border.

The hardest part of this quilt is figuring out how to layout your squares. This design is all about contrast! After much debate I put this together. I swear it took longer to layout the fabrics than it did to sew the top together.

Unfortunately the weather here in New England wasn't cooperating and the meeting was cancelled due to snow. Since I was going to be stuck at home for the day anyway I went ahead and used the ruler to cut out the squares. It's such a leap of faith to start hacking up a perfectly good quilt top!

Here it is reassembled.  Now I just have to wait for the yardage to be released 2/15 so I can put on an outer border and add it to my massive TBQ pile.  I should just book longarm time now!  I'm really happy with the end result.  I don't know how many times I tried to talk myself out of the red border.  My gut said it was the right decision by my head kept pushing for something safe like the Bella Snow.  In the end I think it really made the pinwheels pop and a much more visually interesting quilt.