Heart Quilt Ta-dah!

Well hello again my friends, and welcome; thanks for being here and for all your sweet and encouraging messages, you know I love to get them, as well as your snippets of good advice!

Speaking of good advice I want to particularly mention the lovely Wendy from 'September Violets' who left me a very useful message regarding not using a steam iron when pressing quilt pieces as this can cause some stretching of the fabric - Wendy's message is there in my previous post if you'd like to check it out, and she also relates some funny experiences she's had whilst hand stitching! Thanks so much Wendy, I will remember this and have already learned from it!

I will be linking up again with Chrissie - we surely all know the lovely Chrissie - for 'Stitching Sundays', so do have a look and see what she and other crafty stitchers have been up to this week. Yes, I know, it's not Sunday yet but hey, I just had to get this project finished; can't sit back on my laurels and let the world go by, now can I - and besides, I'm raring to go on another adventure already!

So you now know that this is my Ta-dah post for the little heart quilt so how about we take a look . . .

. . . what do you think? I love this - it finished up measuring 40 x 30 inches, a little bigger than the first quilt (see 'It Started Like This' post), so perhaps the next one will be bigger still - we'll see! I'm becoming braver as I learn! And perhaps I may even be brave enough to risk wrecking the next one by trying my hand at free-motion machine stitching on it: there's one thing, I'll certainly be doing lots of practice at that before I actually risk spoiling a quilt - there's too much work involved to be doing that, methinks!!!

So let's look a little bit at the progression with this since last post . . . here we are with the binding ready to put in place . . . 

. . . and for this I folded the (cream with pink spots) strip double, placed raw edges together and stitched it to the front of the quilt top. Afterwards the binding was folded over and hand sewn to the backing. I know that having chosen the same fabric to back the quilt with, I could have cut that a bit larger to allow for  binding to be incorporated and finally brought round and hand stitched to the front, but for me, and being inexperienced in this quilting world, it was easier to do it the way I did! All's fair in love and war, as they say!

I must say that these little clippy-clicky things were really helpful in keeping the binding in place while I hand stitched, and would also be great when hemming or doing anything of a similar nature. You've probably seen them before, but they were new to me and I might add, so much easier and more efficient than pins. I was getting a bit tired of pricking my fingers, and besides these little clips hold the fabric flat without wrinkles and gathers.

Those lovely little felt balls are the ones so kindly included in my surprise parcel from

'J' at JaB Creations a little while back - I just love that little dish of colour by my side as I work!

Here we are at the final stages - I'm relaxing on my nice comfy chair, feet up, with quilt spread over my wee legs - very comfy position doing something I really enjoy!

And the very last stitch on this sweet little quilt that I love . . . just making doubly sure that corner was safe and secure!

We can't leave it at that of course - I took more pics so you may as well see them, don't you think? Here it is all folded up . . . I don't know why that middle pic makes the background colour appear more cream than it really is . . . 

So that's quilt number two completed and time for me to get cracking on another project, so watch this space. In the meantime here's a pic that shows just a wee corner of our local park, taken a few months ago, but for those of you overseas who have suffered such bad weather this winter, I thought it might bring the thoughts of SPRING to the foreground of your minds - it will come, you know it will!

So lovely that you could all be with me again, and thank you for sharing my Ta-dah moment with me!

Wishing you all a very happy weekend and week ahead, and looking forward to keeping in touch through your lovely blogs and messages!

With my love,

❤Joy xoxo