Liberated Love Letters for February

For February, ww will create 6.5 inch (6 inch finished) tall blocks which spell out all the terms of endearment we can imagine in a palette of red, pinks, whites and creams.   What words do you call your sweetheart or BFF (besides their name)?

THE WORD BLOCKS

If you're feeling stuck, a thesaurus might be your friend, I plugged in the words "darling", "dear", "sweetheart" and "beloved" into the thesaurus function on the dictionary.com site and generated quite a few ideas ... and of. course, all four of those words work, too. Once you start thinking about it, you'll find possibilities everywhere.  The Christine Lanvin song, Don't Ever Call Your Sweetheart by His Name, kept playing in my head when I was sewing my blocks. You can listen here on YouTube and find the lyrics on Christine's site, if you're curious.

Your words should consist of at least three letters and your word blocks should be 6.5 inches tall (to finish at 6 inches) and can be as wide as they need to be, but at least 6.5 inches wide.   Please start and end your words with at least 1" of background fabric.  This will help the winners lay out their blocks without having the words run together.

You may include non-English terms of endearment, but the majority of your blocks should be English.  If you make a non-English block, please provide a translation.

To inspire everyone to make some longer words, along with all the shorts ones, there will be a prize/gift for the quilter who makes the block with the most letters.

THE FABRICS

Fabrics may be solids or prints in Red, Pink, White, Cream. They may include other colors, but should be predominately Red, Pink, White and Cream.  Your blocks maybe be two-color blocks (letters in one fabric and background in another, like my BFF block) or scrappy. My suggestion is that if you go scrappy, that you use a single fabric for either the background or the letters and go scrappy for the other, but you don't have to, as long as you have good contract and your word can be clearly read.  As an example, in the Block Lotto banner I made, both the blue fabrics in the letters and the yellow backgrounds are scrappy, but (I think) there's good contrast and the values of each color are close enough that they blend. 

If you make multiple blocks, you can repeat fabric as long as you mix up the combinations.  As usual, you can make and enter up to 9 blocks. And it's OK to repeat a combination in two different blocks by switching it around and, for example,  making one word block with red letters, white background and another with white letters on a red background.

For some examples of the color-way in my head ... when I saw the blocks at the top of this blog post, I thought it was a good representation of what I'm thinking.    Any of the fabrics like those in this quilt would work:   As would any of the fabrics in the LAST picture (the noodles) in this blog post.


PATTERNS & DIRECTIONS

The blocks can be pieced or appliquéd ... as long as the appliqué doesn't have any raw edges–as some of you know, I just don't like to mix the "fused and tattooed style appliqué with other styles in a quilt). Here are a couple resources for making Liberated-style Letters:

http://quiltville.com/tonya/alphabet1.shtml
http://scrapsandstrings.blogspot.com/2009/01/strip-pieced-letters.html

After you have followed the directions for a few words, you may well find yourself making it up as you go (I did) and developing your own look (a fiber font) ... and that's great.  Just be sure that you are using 1/4 inch seams, so that these blocks will last (because I think they are going to be SO COOL.

If you are not feeling so liberated yet, you can always piece your blocks in a more traditional way.  Marcia has a set of 4" letters on her site, here:

http://www.quilterscache.com/A/AlphabetPatterns.html

I enlarged these and used them for my BFF block.  If you go this route, you'll notice that her blocks have background added on all four sides and you will likely want to edit some of that out on the sides so that the letters in your words are closer together and read as words.

I also found these appliqué letters on the freepatterns site:

http://www.free-quilt-patterns.net/applique/QuiltingAlphabet1.html

I am planning on designing my own appliqué word using cursive handwriting.  It will be a short word, but I really want to do it ... so stay tuned.

You have have another pattern with letters that you like and it's OK to use them.  The differences in style are going to make for an interesting quilt for our winner(s) next month.


SOME EARLY BLOCKS FROM SNEAK PEEKERS

The "Baby" block at the top of this post was made by Kristin.  It's half of "Baby Doll," Doll appears below.  Kristin also made the cupcake block.

"Hot Mama" was made by Dianah.  Ginny made "Cutie."  And Kate made "hugs","love" and "smooch."  "Sweetie", "Beloved", "honey" and "BFF" are mine. 








Click any of the word blocks in this message for a larger image (on Flickr).