Block #45 in the Machine Quilting Challenge

Good Morning,

What a great weekend! Tom and I spent most of Friday museum hopping. My favorite was the show at Myers-Evans House Gallery, featuring Ray Tomasso. We carried his hand made papers in our store for a while. He is a paper artist and the show was filled with some of his large scale cast paper and multi media work. The pieces are very organic with simple colorations of strong neutrals with bold, vibrant color and or textural accents. He's there till the end of May.

Yesterday we headed up to Estes Park to catch a few of the artists at the free Jazz Festival the city was hosting. The weather was lovely and we sat on rocks by the river and listened to some wonderful music. Nice, very nice!

Here is today's new stitch-out. We're beginning a week filled with swirls. Hopefully you've begun to notice that there aren't too many different shapes in machine quilting, just lots of ways to combine the few that there are. This stitch-out features fat, funky hearts with swirls in between. Practice drawing the hearts linked by swirls before you make your first stitch.

Begin near the middle of the block and stitch a fat, funky heart (mine vary in size from about 1" - 1 1/2"), as you come back to the tip of the heart to complete it, continue stitching past the tip and away from the heart just a bit then form a swirl. Swirl in then out again and make another heart. Continue making hearts using the swirls to travel in between them. Make the swirls in various sizes, but always smaller than the hearts (this keeps the design looking neat and tidy). If you get stuck some place where you can't stitch out of, simply knot off and travel to an empty spot. I found it necessary to go back in and add a few swirls between some of the hearts to get an even fill.

Hope you enjoy this design. It's great for girly quilts!

Till tomorrow,

Heather