FEBRUARY UFO CHALLENGE

This is my February challenge.  I plan to quilt and bind my heart quilt this month.  What better month to work on it?  And since I plan to use big-stitch hand work with perle cotton, it will be perfect to stitch while watching the Olympics.

These hearts are from a swap on the DJ Alternate yahoo group back in 2009.  I finished the top that year, but it has languished along with my other 15+ tops that need quilting.  My bad!!!  The setting is using the Disappearing 9-Patch.  I posted about it on this blog way back then. 

Rosa recently quilted her's (well her DH did on his long-arm), and it reminded me of mine.  I worked on my blocks for this swap at the Dear Jane Retreat in Shipshewana, IN, in the fall of 2008.  Whew, that was a while back.  Brings back memories of the many on-line friends I met there, including Ruthie Quilts.  She was working on her's there too, it's the one with that lovely lace in the center'ish.

Happy stitching to my quilty friends. 

FLIMSY COMPLETE

Today I put the last stitches in my Disappearing Nine Patch, Heart to Heart quilt. All of the hearts (except 2) were swap blocks from women all over the world. So I think I will indeed call this quilt, Heart to Heart.

It is 60 x 83, in the end. Now to find or piece backing fabric. I have left-overs from the top for binding.

LAND OF GIANTS

Today I feel like I'm in the Land of the Giants! I'm always making tiny blocks with a million pieces, like DJ and SBS. But today I started my Disappearing Nine Patch Hearts quilt using heart blocks from two swaps I was in last winter. Both the swap on DJ Alternate, called Heart to Heart, or H2H, and the heart swap on my Friendship Swap group had the same guidelines, so the blocks all go together.

You start by making a nine-patch. Since the swaps were 6" squares, the 9-patch was a whopping 18". Huge! The blocks you place in the corners will not be cut, so that's where the hearts go. The center block will end up smallest, so usually you use something darker there.

Here's my first giant 9-patch.

Then you slice it down the center, both vertically and horizontally.

Then you play with the 4 resulting blocks to find an arrangement you like. Here are some of my possibilities, on my design wall.



If your uncut blocks don't have a definite right way up, the possibilities are doubled, or you can start out with two of them (generally diagonally - but there's no rules here) going the opposite direction.
This is really a fun pattern.