A Promise Made in Maine

Back in the fall when I visited my sister in New Hampshire, we drove up to Maine and found a quaint, little quilt shop along the way.

That is where I bought my first batik fabric.

The woman that sold it to me made me promise that I wouldn't be one of those quilters who doesn't combine batiks with other types of fabric :)

A few weeks ago I was in our LQS and found some delicious pink and red batiks that I thought would make a fun valentine project.

While I bought my first batiks in the fall, I have not used them yet, so this was my first project with batiks.  Although I kind of wanted to just use the batiks I had bought, I stayed true to my promise and used a bunch of other kinds of fabrics as well; 30's, modern, & civil war repros.

I have also been wanting to learn how to do foundation piecing so I thought this would be a good opportunity to teach myself.  I found this pattern on the internet.

I had a lot of fun with my first block...

...so I made a few more.

(I do wish I wouldn't have used the big patterned quatrefoil.  It stands out a little too much.  Oh well, live and learn  :)

Instead of doing foundation paper piecing, I found this woman who uses a piece of muslin as the foundation and then you don't have to rip it off in the end. (This is also the tutorial that I went through to learn the technique)  I traced the pattern onto the muslin the first time but then realized I could iron the muslin onto some freezer paper and run it through my printer.  It saved a lot of time that way!

Another regret is that I didn't put a white border around the hearts before the pink border.  The hearts kind of get lost in that wide, busy border.

Still working on that quilting business.  I had a lot of problems with tension on this one but from a distance it looks okay :)

"HAPPY VALENTINE'S WEEK"

...as my cute husband has been saying multiple times the last several days :)