String Hearts for February

The block for February is a 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 inch STRING HEART block. (It will finish at 6 x 8 inches when sewn into a quilt).  This block is made in 2 parts:  First you'll make string rectangles (or make string squares and cut them into rectangles). Then you'll use your string fabric to make the heart block. Andrew made this great example.

The directions for making the block are here:

String Heart with a Bonus

I've been wanting to make these tall hearts again ever since I made the little string heart in the I [heart] the Block Lotto quilt for our blog badge. 

FABRIC GUIDELINES

To keep our blocks a bit consistent, I'm asking that everyone use woven cotton fabric foundations for their strings.  This is an opportunity to use some too-thin fabric that has found it's way into your stash or too-ugly fabric (if it is light colored enough not to show through your strings.)

The "strings" may be any color, solid or with print or woven designs. Almost all my strings were narrow than 2 inches and that seemed to work well.  Try to have at least 4 different fabrics in each string rectangle.

The background fabric should be VERY dark.  It might be solid black or a black-on-black (BOB) print, but it could also be dark blue, dark violet, dark green, dark burgundy, example.

If you make multiple blocks, you may use the same background for all your blocks and you can repeat fabrics in your string fabric as long as you don't make a bunch of matching hearts. You may make a maximum of 9 blocks.

MAKING STRING FABRIC

For this block, you'll first need to make pairs of string pieced rectangles--one with left-leaning strings and one with right-leaning strings. Put together in your block, they will form a v-like shape inside the heart.

Many quilters have posted good directions online for how-to make string blocks. Kate published the basics on the Block Lotto blog when we made string pairs, here:

January Block Lotto String Square Pairs

Bonnie Hunter has a String piecing primer on her Quiltville site here:

String Quilting Primer

MAKING THE HEARTS

These blocks are made using a technique which results in interesting angles without the use of templates.  It may take a few blocks before you get the hang of it, but once you do . . . you'll see possibilities for using it in other blocks EVERYWHERE--ask me how I know ;-)

Don't beat yourself up if your heart blocks seem less than perfect.The string fabric on the dark background is going to grab the viewers eye and unless they are card-carrying members of the quilt police, they are not going to see the shy points (hiding in the seams) or slightly mis-matched halves.

LABELS FOR BLOG POSTS

For any blog post related to the string hearts, add the the label "string heart."  For any post which includes a photo of your string hearts, add the label, "Feb 11 photos."

THE VIRTUAL QUILT

Here's some inspiration--photos of 60 string heart blocks--courtesy of sneak peekers, Andrew, Brenda Kay, Carol, Ellie, Ginny, Irene, Julie P, Kate, Kim, Linnea, Maree, Michelle, Moira, Sharon, Shelley, Wilma and me.

You can click any of the individual photos for a larger image and see all the full size images of all the blocks made so far in my flickr photoset, String Heart Quilt Blocks.