State Fair Parade 4 - Purple Hearts

Another project in the State Fair Parade! One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent to the state fair with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

Hearts, hearts and more hearts! This wall hanging all started with just one little heart and grew and grew! I was trying some new machine applique techniques and writing step-by-step directions for my method of satin stitching, which you can see here and here.

With a scrap of fabric, I stitched one heart and then another. Soon I had various heart scattered on a large piece of fabric. Instead of adding it to my over-whelming pile of "I don't want to throw this away, but don't know what to use it for yet!", I decided to add borders, stitch a few more hearts and bind it so I would have something finished!

I stitched the hearts by machine applique, but also digitized the heart so it is an embroidery applique design. If you would like to download this FREE heart applique design, click here. If you are new to embroidery applique designs and how to use them with your embroidery machine, see here and here.

As for the quilting, I stitched in the ditch around the blocks and borders and then added my favorite method of quilting - stippling!! I will stipple anything and everything I can get my hands on; I just love stippling!!

Since this project had a most unusual beginning, I decided it needed to have an interesting end to it also! I had just seen Ricky Tim's method of piped binding and was itching to try it on something. Guess what? That just happened to be the perfect finishing feature. BTW - If you haven't seen Ricky's method for piped binding, detailed in his DVD Grand Finale, you should! It's an easy-to-do piped binding which creates a professional finish on your quilts!

And the label? Just my name and the date with a machine embroidered applique heart. Simple!

What an interesting project - no planning, no thought, just start stitching and keep going until it's finished!! I was able to use some small pieces of fabric leftover from another project, write and detail satin stitching techniques and try out a new method of binding all in the same piece! What could be better than that?!?!

Here are the judge's comments:
FABULOUS binding! Great satin stitching! More WOW factor would be nice.

My thoughts and comments:

I fully agree; what more can I say? The hearts do get a little boring after you've seen the first couple...:)