My heartfelt extras

Through the process of making the Heartfelt quilt, there ended up being a couple of extra blocks that did not make the cut, when assembling the original.  They were added to the orphan blocks containing.  Recently, I went through this container and pulled out a total of 18 various combinations, to make quilts for charity.  

Yesturday, a thought came to me about three blocks in particular.  You may say that they were speaking to me....lol.  I had put them aside and counted them as three individual items, but the thought was that they are all red, white with some pink.  So, why not put them together and make one quilt.  This instantly reduces my list by two, which is a win, win, for me.  

When I am using orphan blocks, I never really know what the quilt will look like in the end.  It's more of a try this here and that there, or reverse the position....  You know what I mean?  Until I actually start sewing them together, anything goes.  Even then, it's not finite.   

Here is how the process went.  It started with a drawing and two blocks that both measured 9" square, so that was a good start.  I decided that I also wanted this to be in the shape of a heart.  I placed them side by side and added the third block below them.  This third block is a cake plate block, which just so happens to be on a diagonal, so it naturally finished off the point at the bottom of the heart.  At first the heart looked a bit boxy, until I decided to add the small bits on the side of the 9" squares.  

By this point I figured I had enough of a pattern to start sewing.  Then I needed the two humps at the top and decided a simple hour glass unit would do the trick.  I also wanted the perimeter to stand out with either red or dark pink.  That is when the cake plate block received the pink borders at the bottom edges.  I had to keep this simple, so instead of trying to fit small blocks to fill the space between the middle section and the cake plate block, I just did a square in a square effect, so that it would be easier to work with.

 

Then I needed to bridge the gap from the dark pink edge of the cake plate block to the lower edge of the section above to close off the heart shape.  Again, keeping it simple, I decided to do a half square in red strings.  I did the white part bigger then I needed so that I could take my time and match up the most important parts, to form the heart shape.  Then cut away the extra white.

All quilted and bound!!  What do you think?  Do you like it?  I'm happy with it.  Three orphan blocks used in a quilt and off my works in progress list.  Now I am down to 57.  I am hoping that, as I go along, there may be some others that can be combined to reduce the list faster.  This quilt is going to Project Linus.  It's a NICU quilt and will go to a hospital, to cover the small baby incubators, to keep the bright lights down.

Take care everyone.