All You Need is LOVE!

If you've never played the card game Fluxx you should totally go and buy a copy.  The game is easy to play and fun.  Why do I bring this up?  Because one of the ways to win is with a card called "All You Need is Love."  (My mad Google Skills tell me this goal is available in Fluxx 2.0 and they are on version 5.0 so your mileage may vary.)  What does that have to do with what I made this week?  You'll have to follow along to find out.

Leasa over at Project Leasa challenged pretty much all of Instagram to sew from their stash in 2015.  She has started off with a great challenge for January.  Go get the details of the first challenge from her blog and meet me back here.  I'll wait.

The challenge was to use at least 75% of the materials for the project from your stash.  I will have to admit that I had 100% of these materials on-hand.  Batting, thread, fabric, everything!  Don't be proud of me.  This means I'm about two steps from being a hoarder.  Okay, a few more than two steps, but I have plenty of fabric.  This fabric has been around since some time in 2012 when I received it as part of the Fat Quarter Shop's charm pack club.  (Sadly, I canceled this subscription in December.)

The background fabric is leftover backing from my Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt.  Leasa shared this pattern from Robert Kaufman and I thought it would work out great for the fabrics I had on hand.  I modified the pattern for the size I wanted to make and the fabric I had on-hand.  Each of these little square finishes at 2" by 2".

I pressed my design boards into action to keep everything straight after I decided on the layout.  This charm pack had several repeats of some fabrics so it wasn't easy to keep the fabrics from being close to their mates.  I'm sure I could have agonized over fabric placement and made it much more pleasing but I have vowed that a finished quilt is much better than a perfect quilt that may never happen.

The piecing was really straightforward.  I changed the large background areas to use a solid piece of fabric instead of piecing 25 tiny squares for what is basically a solid block.

I had plenty of fabric left over after I had made the center so I decided that adding the little charms around the outside would really make this little quilt shine.  I put some of the leftover black squares in there to let the quilt breath a little.

Once I got it all pieced together I decided it needed something to fill in one of those large, empty, corner squares.  Something that echoed the design in meaning and color.  I used this design from Urban Threads Embroidery.  I love their designs.  If you ever want to buy me something and are just plain stumped, a gift certificate for Urban Threads would be great!

While the embroidery was stitching along I found a piece of batting leftover from a larger quilt and pieced it so it would be big enough for this project.  See how good I am at using up my stash?

The quilting on this one was something that kind of came to me once I got the top on the frame.  I used a combination of motifs to create a subtle background and a more pronounced stitching on the heart and the border.  This is the back of the quilt where you can make out the shape of the heart.

Top thread for the heart is Magnifico and the top thread for the background areas is So Fine!  Both threads are from Superior Threads.

I even quilted the letters of the embroidery design to make the rest of the design stand out.  I'm really pleased with how this turned out.  The embroidery threads are all Sulky with Bottom Line from Superior in the bobbin.

I had just enough of this coordinating print to make up the binding.  The selvage was almost too cute to cut.  (Guilty secret:  I don't really care how cute the selvage is.  I'm rarely in love with it and won't cut it off to save it.)

Since I planned on hanging this quilt in my dining room it had to have the right kind of hanger.  I used a leftover piece of the backing fabric to make a hanging sleeve for the top of the quilt.  (Sorry, this is the best picture of it.  If you need more detail you'll have to drop me a note.)

The label almost didn't make it onto the quilt.  I pressed down the top two edges of this label, hand stitched those two edges and then stitched it into the binding when I attached the binding to the back.  This is also how the hanging sleeve got attached.  I may attach more labels like this.

The binding was finished by machine on the front of the quilt.  There it is:  a little quilt called All You Need is LOVE!  Finished size:  30" by 30".

Have you joined the Sew My Stash 2015 crowd?  I'd love to hear about it.