A Heart for Mom's Window

A heart to hang in Mom's window...

One of the truly uplifting things that came out of the early part of the pandemic was the custom of hanging a heart in the window in support of front line health care workers. 

Over a year later, the heart that I made out of ribbon is still hanging in my upstairs window.

From conversations with Mom over the past year, I'd gotten the impression that she likes the idea as well. Since I've been cutting down on the number of things that I make for her (she can only use so many), a gift of a heart that she can display in her own window seemed perfect.

Armed with a bunch of primarily Robert Kaufman red themed fabrics and the remainder of my red and white ribbon, I set out to make a double-sided heart. (The picture you see above is an edited version showing half of each side.)

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The outward facing side is made out of strips of ribbon like my original. I arranged the strips on top of the fusible side of a piece of Decor Bond, so there was ultimately no sewing involved. (For those who have never done this, please use a pressing cloth on ribbon. It may not fuse that readily to the interfacing and require repeated passes. The last thing you want to have happen is for the ribbon to scorch or shrink under the steam/heat.)

Vertical lengths of ribbon pinned against some Decor Bond interfacing...

I've now used up all of the red and white ribbon that I purchased from a Michaels discount bin back in 2017. I haven't stepped into that store in well over a year due to the pandemic. (◕︵◕)

The heart in my window doesn't have a "reverse" side (it just shows the back of the Decor Bond), but I thought for Mom's gift, I'd give her something nice to look at from the inside as well. I dug through my scraps box and fabric remnants for anything in red that I could patchwork together.

Fabric scraps pinned to some fusible fleece...

Some of it is from my original Robert Kaufman box; all are RK fabrics except for a Tim Holtz (Eclectic Elements Dictionary) print.

Patchwork piece the fabrics onto the fusible fleece backing...

The pieces were laid down and pinned with a small amount of fabric turned under (and overlapping the adjacent piece) on at least one side. I then sewed along the turned edge. (The technique is similar to what I did for my first quilting project.)

Turn under as much or as little fabric as you need...

I stitched with a very small seam allowance, as I tried to minimize the amount of fabric turned underneath.

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It's always easier to secure the smallest pieces of fabric first. I ended up with this large strip at the end, which I turned under on both sides to sit on top of everything.

The last piece!

Here it is all done.

All fabric scraps secured...

Now it was time to do some quilting. 

I showed you parts of what I did when I posted about my free motion quilting progress a couple of weeks ago. There's a mixture of my practice FMQ here, as well as standard straight line quilting.

Fabric side all quilted...

Every time I do any significant amount of straight line quilting, it occurs to me that it is so time consuming! The quilting on the largest piece of fabric involved only sixteen diagonal lines (plus the small lines along the edges to advance from one to the next), but it seemed to take forever.

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The last part of the project was to (bias) bind the two halves into one. 

I was actually able to fuse the two hearts together because I had the fusible side of the fleece exposed on the back of the fabric heart. (Not that I would do that again, because moving the piece around during quilting with the little nubbies on the underside was problematic.)

 

Attaching the bias binding...

Here are the two sides of the heart after attaching the binding.

A show of appreciation for our health care workers...

For hanging, I did the same as with the kite that's in my window, a little clip looped through with some elastic string.

Oh, and if there happens to be anyone reading who is in the health care field: thank you; you have been amazing beyond measure. You may have signed up for that career, but nobody signed up for a never-ending pandemic.

You may recall my past ruminations about running out of things to write about and that this blog is nearer to its natural end than its humble beginnings. Back in June, I celebrated my 400th post with the idea that I would give myself permission to skip the odd Saturday. Haven't yet done that and for anyone curious, I actually have weekly posts lined up into November, so no immediate "danger".

That said, it's still an ongoing challenge and if you're one of the handful who would miss me if I ever disappeared, perhaps you can take a turn in the spotlight and help me at the same time.

I'm going to try a new thing here and ask readers to send me sewing stories that I can feature every now and then. For my first attempt at cultivating some additional blog content, I ask you to submit to me (via email; click through to my Blogger profile on the sidebar at left to get the address) a description of the best thing that you've ever sewn and why it deserves that title — along with a photo, of course. Be sure to let me know how you want to be identified; feel free to use an alias if you want. (I will respond to every submission that I receive, so please check your SPAM if you don't hear back!)

If this works, it will give me material for at least one blog post and the motivation to try again. Oh, and there's no time frame/limit for this; no need to get it to me by next week or anything like that. I will add this notice to my blog posts intermittently to see if the idea gains any traction.

'Til next...