Teeny Tiny Hearts

I received a lovely valentine card from my friend Sherry Perry this week.  She foundation pieced a heart and sewed it to a postcard.  

Valentine Heart Card created by Sherry Perry

I've been admiring the card all week and thinking about creating my own postcard.  I had just ordered a new kind of foundation paper along with a new tool for foundation piecing and I wanted to see how well they worked.

For my heart, I started with a design I did in the EQ8 Drawing Blocks book.  If you have the book, the instructions for drafting the basic heart block as a simple foundation is on pages 59 and 60.  There is only one section in this block which would make it easy to piece and it would nicely accommodate different sizes.

Single Heart Block by Kari Schell

Foundation for Single Heart Block

Then I started thinking about create a heart in a heart and came up with this variation.   This one could be foundation pieced with two sections.

Double Heart block using Serendipity

Foundation sections for double heart block.

Then I expanded on the concept and created a triple heart block.

Triple Heart Block was created by adding to Serendipity

Then what about four hearts?  

A fourth heart was added -- which is teeny tiny.

This one would wouldn't be easy to paper piece as designed -- but you could foundation piece the smallest section.  And then create a separate foundation for the next size (with foundation one becoming the center square for the second foundation).  Then foundation 2 (once completed) becomes the center square for foundation 3.

Use a foundation as the starting square in a subsequent foundation to make piecing the triple hearts block easier.

You you can just keep repeating the process and make that center smaller and smaller.  So how small would you go?

Before deciding, I I needed to design my quilt (which is the size of a postcard).  After playing a bit with the center size and border sizes (along with researching acceptable postcard sizes with USPS), I came up with the layout below.

Four Heart Postcard designed by Kari Schell

The size of the postcard quilt is 5-1/4" x 4-1/4".  The heart block size ended up being 2-3/4" x 2-3/4"  After measuring, I realized the size of the center heart was slightly over 1/4".  Yikes!

So I decided I needed to eliminate the center heart ( and go back to the triple heart.  The center pieced center heart is now a whopping 3/4" x 3/4".

I finally settled on the tripe heart version of the block.

Learn how to draft the blocks as shown in this block and the quilt in my Electric Quilt 8 tutorial.

I will be sharing more on my construction process and observations on my new foundation piecing tools in a future post hopefully next week)..

---

EQ8 Drawing Blocks

The EQ8 Drawing Blocks book does a deep dive in drafting blocks in all the block worktable options.  Included in the book is the foundation friendly heart block shown above.

​Purchase a copy of the book from On Point Quilter for $5 off.  The price has been adjusted in the store to reflect the sale price.  I would be happy to autograph a copy of the book if you wish.

Price:  (normally $29.95)  On sale for  $24.95 through February 29, 2020.

Purchase EQ8 Drawing Blocks

---

Happy quilting.

​Kari

Join the On Point Quilter weekly newsletter and receive regular tips and inspiration on using Electric Quilt 8 along with the  Free 12 Top
Tips for EQ8 video guide.