Valentine's Mini Circle Quilt


Here is another Valentine's Day quilt! This was another fun and fast one to make! I am loving these smaller quilts! They come together so quickly it's hard to get distracted by other projects before I get them finished!


When I designed this one I was thinking that it's been a little while since I made a circle quilt. Too long, in fact! And in my quilt inspiration search I noticed that lots of Valentine's quilts have hearts set in a square...so I decided to put them in circles. I added a couple of rings and the stars just to break it up a bit. My husband tried to talk me out of the stars...probably because I keep trying to put them in quilts...but I just love them so much! I can't help myself! I think they give this quilt a funky and fun little twist!


I always have such fun picking out the fabrics for quilts...especially when I can find what I have in mind! The black grid fabric is from an older line - Spin by Whistler Studios for Windham Fabrics - it is exactly what I wanted for the black so I was thrilled to find it on Etsy. I used almost all I bought and now I am thinking I should probably buy a bunch more and stash it! 


I wasn't sure exactly what fabrics I wanted to use for the hearts. I had originally mocked this up using dark, medium and light pinks. I bought a couple of different Valentine themed charm packs and some random pinks and reds and black/white prints so I would have lots of choices. In the end, First Crush by Sweetwater for Moda won out. I like pink better than red, but since I just made a Valentine's quilt using pink, I figured I'd mix it up and go with reds. Also, I really loved the text prints it the First Crush line...so that clinched it. There were some really great grays in the line that I thought would be cute too, but no matter how I rearranged them, I couldn't make it work. So I went with all reds and whites instead. I am pretty happy with how it turned out! 


And...the quilting. I had different plans for this than how it turned out. I really wanted to put some kind of crazy grid or crosshatching in the back ground, but of course I wanted to do it using the automatic mode on the quilting machine (for precision and to save my back some pain...it's getting harder to quilt being this pregnant, so that automatic quilting mode is saving me!) But unfortunately, I don't know enough yet to make it work how I wanted. So instead I chose this pretty frilly pattern that fit nicely between the circles and then I just stitched around all the rest of the shapes. 


I used the same black grid fabric for the binding - I had some of the black and white text print from the First Crush line that I was planning on using, but it didn't match the other black in the quilt well enough, so I couldn't do it.


I took my cute little two-year-old with me out in the crazy, threatening to rain, windy weather this morning to snap a few pictures. She is such a good little side-kick - she brought her baby in her stroller and she helped me hold the quilt so it wouldn't blow away! Gotta train 'em young! ;) Now I'm going to find a nice little spot in my house to hang this little gem! Then I'm going to finish a few other little Valentine's decor projects I've got planned - you can see some of those on instagram if you like - you can find me here (@ahhhquilting)


And...once again, I have performed a miraculous feat and made a pattern for this little quilt. You can find it in my Etsy shop! Happy Valentine's quilting and decorating!