Glowing Hearts - Tutorial for Lower Heart Section

Are you ready to begin piecing some hearts? I bet you are. If you are like me, you rarely make it through cutting out an entire quilt before you have to pause and “just sew up one block”.😄 However, this week is just half of the heart, the bottom half. It uses a pretty unique way of making it. Remember you can pick up the pattern at SandraJaneQuilts if you want to sew ahead or make the throw. 

*Note that my Gratitude post will be out tomorrow so as not to interfere with the QAL.

Here are the pieces I cut out last Friday for my Glowing Hearts version. The maple leaf is rough cut for now about an eighth of an inch all the way around. I’m using the Crafted Appliqué™️ method for this.

For those nerdy fabric peeps like moi, here are the fabric deets.

Dark red - Blank Textiles (2004😳)

A - Boutique Love More by Susan Black for P&B Textiles

B - Season's Elegance by Studio e

C - Azalea Trail by Nancy Odom for P&B Textiles (another 2004😳)

D - R.E.D. Original Designs for Fabricland/Fabricville

E - The Aird Group - Quilting Treasures

F - Fossil Fern by Patricia B. Campbell and Michelle L. Jack for Benartex

Light - Art Gallery Elements (2023)

Bright Red - R.E.D. Original Designs for Fabricland/Fabricville

Last weekend was Easter in many countries, so perhaps travel, family time or down time took up half of last week's sewing time, and you still need to cut your fabrics. Whatever you decide, this week I'll show you how I devised a method to make the bottom half of the "strippy" heart with next to no waste. Then it's up to you as to whether you go ahead and make all your dark background hearts, which is actually next week's step, OR you simply take a look at the method, but wait until next week to make the hearts OR you just make the bottom half of the dark background hearts. So many choices!

Note to those of you who have purchased the pattern: the method used to make the bottom half of the hearts is slightly different as compared to the one I will show in this post. I actually did a 'what if'... test to see if my original construction would work for just the bottom half, and it did.

When I first saw the block somewhere on Pinterest way back in about 2017/18, there were no instructions or link, so I happened to have a jellyroll on hand and set about making it without a centre seam, and without leftover HSTs. When I designed Winter Blues for a Project Quilting challenge in January, I used a fat quarter stack which severely limited my fabric amounts, so along with the no waste HST method, I came up with yet another way of not wasting strips.

Lower Heart Section Method

Gather the three fabric strips for the bottom section of the heart. I’m starting with the hearts on the Dark Red background (BG). These are, from top to bottom: Fabrics D, E, and F. Fold each in half to find the centre and pinch the raw edge to make a crease mark. If you fold the top and bottom strips with wrong sides in and the middle strip with rights sides in, the creases will nest inside each other. ☺️ Michelle in Scotland reminded me of this little tip which I just naturally do.

Use fabrics D, E and F for the lower half of the heart on dark BG.

Matching the centres, join the three strips. Press the seams down or open if you prefer.

Place a dark red BG HST on top of this unit, right sides together, aligning the top horizontal raw edges and having the vertical raw edge at the 6 ½". The 45° line on the ruler should be along the (future) ¼" seam. I pin this since it's a bias edge. Stitch.

Trim away the strips, and press the seams down.

An artsy shot

Repeat with the left side.

Trim this rectangle to 6 ½" x 12 ½”.  If you are making Glowing Hearts version, make four lower heart sections on dark red BG. If you are making the Winter Blues version, make five. Or take this week off and work on your other projects.😊

See you next week when we will make the dark BG hearts.