quilted heart

This is a quilted wall hanging that I made. The design is from Kumiko Sudo's "Circles of the East," a book that uses mon, Japanese family crests, as inspiration for applique quilt blocks.

The main changes I made were that I added another pair of vines and, in a largely unpremeditated move, decided that it needed to be heart-shaped. I don't think that would have happened had I had access to a sewing machine when I was binding the outer edge. The process took far too long and left me time to stew over how bad the binding was looking as a square. I also did weird looping things when I attempted to miter the corners. I guess I haven't bound anything quilt-like in awhile. By the time I finished the heart binding, there weren't many other directions to go with the shape and I didn't want to redo it, even though some parts are puffier than they need to be.

I got away with only two trips to the fabric store and used mostly scrap materials. The disappearing marker that I used to draw the placement of the pieces on the background fabric was a shocking $4. I'm tempted to go on some sort of quilting binge so I can use the marker before it dries up, but that is highly unlikely. I have knitting projects awaiting.

In a sad turn of events in my battle with the library, the book I requested came too late for me to be able to check it out. Oh well... on to projects for which I already have yarn!