A Scrappy Patchwork Hearts Quilt 

My scrappy Patchwork Hearts quilt was NOT a fast finish. Despite my best laid plans, this project went off the rails and took nearly a year to complete. What can you do!? Sometimes a quilt wants you to take your time!

Historical timeline

This fabric pull photo is dated Feb 2 2024, which makes me think that I had high hopes of finishing it in time for Valentine’s Day. Ha! Past Shelly was so naive. She had so much faith in her ability to whip together a massively scrappy project in under two weeks. 

And while I did make some good progress on these (somewhat detailed) blocks, I soon realized that this quilt would more likely be ready to snuggle in time for Valentine’s Day 2025. I only missed by a year! 

Scrappy goodness

Regardless of the time it took, I was in love with this project from the beginning. I decided to make a carbon copy version of this quilt, and use low volume fabrics as my background and prints for the hearts. It was so fun to comb through my scrap bins and pull out any and every colour of the rainbow! 

I hope this isn’t too controversial, but when it came to the background fabrics, I used any and all that I could find. There’s a mix of true whites, grays, creams, and in-betweens. I know that some people prefer to keep their whites separated, but I decided the more the merrier. No low volume was excluded from this scrappy Patchwork Hearts!

Choosing a palette and layout

It was a challenge to narrow down the palette to *only* 60 prints that I thought would work well in an ombre colour arrangement, but I managed to find a selection that was pleasing to my eye. Just for fun, I slapped them up on my design wall (a piece of batting that I attached with thumbtacks) and arranged them in a way that I thought looked nice. This turned out to be a clinch move by Past Shelly. 

Once my fabrics were chosen, I cut, cut, cut out all the various pieces of background fabric and prints for the hearts and sewed exactly one test block. This block might even have been finished by Feb 14. Does that count for anything??

Then I promptly set the project aside for a month while I finished up my scrappy Log Cabin quilt.

The perfect retreat project

Every March and October I go on a quilting retreat with my quilty friends. From experience, I know that it’s a good idea to bring a project (or two) that are repetitive in nature. By that, I mean that the project has a lot of the same block - a pattern where you can chain piece your blocks while chitchatting with friends / snacking the day away. 

I figured that my scrappy Patchwork Hearts quilt would be the perfect project, but I also knew that I didn’t want to make the entire quilt from scratch while there. That might have been a bit *too* repetitive for me. 

Getting prepared

The solution: pre-sewing! Before heading to retreat in March, I sewed together some of the smaller components of the heart blocks. I started by adding the tiny snowball corners to the heart fabric, and really enjoyed the way my sewing island looked; almost like it was covered in festive bunting!

It was fun to trim several of these blocks at once by lining them up on my cutting mat. I love a good shortcut, and this is one of the best ones up my sleeve!

Then I remember neatly packing up all my little pieces of fabric so I could work on it in the near future.

But did I? Dear reader, I did not. 

Progress: delayed

I have zero recollection of why I didn’t pull out this project at retreat. I know I made lots of cute stuff, including a couple of quilt tops and a bunch of bags (proof below), but for some reason I didn’t touch my scrappy Patchwork Hearts. 

And did I work on it during the six months after the March 2024 retreat? Still, reader, the answer is no. 

The pieces stayed in their little travel bag, all neatly organized and ready to be pulled out at a moment’s notice. Their moment to shine didn’t come until October 2024, when I went to the NEXT retreat. 

Picking it back up

It was simple enough to pick up where I left off - all the pieces were stacked together and labelled, and I was able to refer to my test block. I was glad to have a simple project to work on, and got all the block halves assembled in a short amount of time. 

This is where I was glad for my (nighttime, not-well-lit) photo of my colour arrangement, because it helped me lay out all of the completed blocks in the “correct” order. My friend Nicole helped me give it a “once over” and make sure that the ombre looked nice. 

Scrappy Patchwork Hearts Halves

This is why I chose to only assemble the blocks into halves. The pattern tells you to only use full hearts, filling in the sides with background fabric. But I decided to fill in the sides with heart halves (why not add more colour, if possible?) With my blocks split in two vertically, I had the freedom to arrange and rearrange to my heart’s content without having to seam rip any blocks in two at the end. Easy peasy!

Once I was happy with the layout, I pulled all the little pieces off the wall and set about webbing them together.  It’s truly shocking how quickly this method produces rows that are ready to be sewn together. Have you ever tried it? If not, you’re missing out on a game-changing technique!

A finished top!

I sewed the rows together, gave it a final press and rang my bell to celebrate a “finish” at retreat. It is so satisfying to hear the ding ding dings and then be overcome by all the oohs and ahhs from my quilting buds. No one will appreciate a finished quilt top like a room full of quilters.

Not wanting to let this project linger any longer, I pulled it out of my bag as soon as I got home from retreat. Despite the fact that it’s the hardest seam to sew in an entire project, I managed to create a backing for it in no time and got it loaded on the longarm machine. 

Quilting

In writing this blog post, I noticed that I used the EXACT SAME quilting design as Emily’s quilt. I swear that wasn’t intentional - I just love the look of this pantograph and thought it would pair well with this pattern! It’s called Sweet Marmalade, for anyone who’s interested. 

Binding

Next came the decision about binding. I chose to do Big Stitch binding, which involves sewing the binding to the front of the quilt, then wrapping it to the back and stitching it down using chunky thread. You can see more about the process (on yet another scrappy ombre rainbow Emily Dennis quilt here), but I love the handmade look it gives the binding.

Big Stitch binding is so FAST. I whipped these stitches on the back of the quilt in the amount of time it took to call my Mum and watch the documentary Martha on Netflix (two separate events, I promise). 

Photo shoot

Later that same afternoon, I snapped some photos of my scrappy Patchwork Hearts quilt. I love that despite the fact that it was a gloomy day, you can still see how bright and happy this quilt is. 

Although it took nearly a year to complete, I’m so happy to have this quilt ready to cuddle (just in time for Valentine’s Day 2025). I can’t wait to wash it up so it will get all floppy and snuggly!

Do you love a scrappy quilt like this one? Let me know in the comments!