As we draw near to February, my mind always turns to hearts and rainbows. I’ve made these before in larger sizes but wanted some smaller ones for gifts. They are about 6.5 inches square. They aren’t much of a stach buster, for some reason my scrap bin never seems to get less full. Try doing a pink and red one, or one with your favorite colors, or a rainbow series making one each of yellow, green, etc.
Draw a heart on a scrap piece of cotton and any other guidelines needed. Pull out those scraps (or any fabric) and start layering up small snippets of color. I like lots of color texture, so I save small scraps just for this purpose.
Carefully stitch all over the scraps. I use a dissolvable film to cover mine, but I’ve done it by pinning like crazy and then doing a few passes of stitching before removing the pins and continuing. Another idea is a bit of glue stick, or use fusible interfacing with the fusible side up and then iron on the scraps, enough will stick to allow you to start stitching. Get happy with the stitching! I then dissolve the top layer and let the whole thing dry. I also scrub the fabric together to get all the exposed edges to fray more for an even scrappier look.
Lay the top layer of fabric over the scrappy heart, turn over and stitch around the heart from the back. See why you need to have that shape marked on the back?
I then cut out the inside of the heart near to the stitching leaving a scant 1/8 inch. Then rough this up too so it looks frayed.
Then sandwich a piece of quilt batting and the backing fabric and quilt away. I just stitched around the heart shape getting larger each pass. Square up the mini quilt and add a binding. Don’t forget to add a hanger on the back if you are going to display. I’ve also made mini pillows out of these too.
I really love these! Thanks for walking us through the process. I really should be better about saving all of the scraps so I can make something like this in the future.
I bookmarked your other post like this because I loved it so much and swore I would try it. I STILL love this! I really need to do it. The look is so awesome. I’d love to make pillow covers with this technique for my couch. I love the bright colors vs the black background (but it’s on top so not really the background…). One day. Thank you for sharing the tutorial!
These hearts are gorgeous! Just what is needed to get my crafty juices going in the dark Midwestern US winter. Thanks for the tutorial! It makes me very happy that you gave us different ways to accomplish the results you achieved.
These are one of my favourite things that you make, I just adore them. Thanks for the tute, you know I have a rainbow plethora of scraps to try it with!
