Feel the Love Wall Hanging

Do you Feel the Love?

All the hearts and valentine projects I have been seeing here in the blogosphere inspired me to come up with a quick project that I could get done this weekend. I came up with this free pattern for a Valentine Wall Hanging called “Feel the Love”.

Here is a quick tutorial!

Fabric needed: a layer cake or (10-12) 10″ squares and 1/2 yd of background fabric.

I used a layer cake of Twice as Nice by The Quilted Fish for Riley Blake Designs. It is just full of reds and pinks…I set aside the blues for another project. There were 6 reds and 6 pinks in this layer cake. You only need 10, so pick your favorites. I just used all 12 for a little more variety, but I did have some extras afterwards.

Cut into 1.5″ strips. Toss the teeny bits left over.

Sew your strips into strip sets of 6 each. Make sure to mix up your strips and press as you go. You will need 10 strip sets.

Cut a 3.5″ strip and set aside, we are not using this portion. Using a 4.5″ square ruler as your template…center the 45 degree line along the center seam of your strip set.

Here is a close up of the 45 degree line running along the center seam of your strip set. (That will be between your 3rd and 4th strip)

Trim along all four sides of your ruler. This is what you should end up with. If you don’t have a 4.5″ ruler, you can use a larger one, but will have to do some rotating.

Now, this is just the way I did this…so no judging:) Take 4 of your blocks and using your seam ripper, rip out the center seam. Yes, I know….voluntary ripping!

Using your background fabric, cut (4) 5″squares and (2) 4.5″ squares. Take one of the half blocks that you just separated and line the corner of the block up with the corner of a 5″ background square.

Sew a 1/4″ seam along the edge of the half block, this will be along the same line of stitches you just ripped out.

Line your stitching up with the 1/4″ line on your ruler and trim the excess. Use the background piece you just trimmed off and repeat for the other half of your block.

Press the new block open for your pieced HST. You should have 8 of these HST blocks, 6 whole blocks and 2 solid background squares for your layout. All of these blocks finish at 4.5″.

Here is the layout.

Cut (2) 4.5″ WOF strips for your borders. Out of one strip sub-cut your right and left borders at 16.5″. Using the other strip sub-cut the top and bottom borders at 24.5″. Add them to your top in that order. Your top is done! Layer up your quilt sandwich and quilt as desired. You will need (2) 2.5″ strips to make your binding.

I quilted “Feel the Love” using Aurifil 50wt. cotton thread in Light Gray with a basic straight line quilting design. I finished the binding using this machine binding tutorial.