Another Black and White

When a friend is facing a major health crisis, what is a quilter to do?  That’s right, make a healing heart quilt, as quick as you can.   My friend wears a lot of black and red, I’ve noticed, and as it just happens, I had a whole pile of black and white four patch blocks left over from my daughter’s quilt.  It took me a whole afternoon with my handy unpicker to separate the blocks.  With the loose threads of cotton picked out, and a good press with the iron, those squares looked as good as new.  Now what else?  I cut  a pile of white cotton squares – they will go with it nicely,  and found some pretty red fabric in my stash to use as well.  Then I needed a trip to Spotlight for some backing.  Having decided on making a raggy quilt, I was looking for something soft, preferably red flannel.  Unfortunately the flannel supply was well picked over, and there was nothing remotely suitable.  In the end I purchased red polar fleece patterned with hearts, got it home and washed it.  Can’t help myself, I have to wash all fabrics before I work with them.  Then I cut some more squares and the whole pile looked like this.

All cut and ready to sew

Healing hearts were next,   and these I machine appliquéd onto the white squares.  How many to make?  Who knows, sometimes these quilts just seem to evolve by themselves.  I just stitched what I thought was right, and if needs be, I will make some more later.

Heart blocks all stitched

The next step was to stitch the black and whites onto the polar fleece squares and lay the whole lot out on the floor.  Then I rearranged them till I liked what I saw, and stitched then together in rows. Just as well Robin is a patient quilter’s husband, he is well used to stepping over partly made quilts lying all over the sitting room carpet.   Just a bit more to do, then with any luck I’ll soon be ready to sew the binding on.  I’ll bundle the whole quilt into the caravan over the Easter holidays and hand stitch the binding down, and hopefully get all that snipping done with my scissors to turn those seams into a “raggy” quilt.