In the Pink

Pink is the RSC color for the month of June and I've had so many other projects to work on that I've failed to get to my pink scraps, of which I have many. I do have a plan for them however, but don't know if I will even begin to get to that this month. All I've done using pink scraps this month is to add a few pieces to my Charm Square Heart Quilt.

I began this project about 5 years ago and only had a little of it done when we put our property on the market and I had to completely clear out the studio to have Flo's house staged for showing. It got boxed up with everything else and dragged off to storage. It was stored in the same project box as the ladybug quilt which I had also barely started at the time. I didn't realize what the pieces were for, or that I had a plan for them when I saw them in the box and when the ladybug quilt was done I just stored the box away with all the pieces in it.

Then I ran across this photo while looking for something else in my picture library and it jogged my memory about what all the pieces I found in the project box were for. So once I was done with Abby's quilt and hadn't yet begun Dan's quilt I pulled this out and began making a new plan for it. Sorry the photo isn't very good, must have been taken at night when I was in a hurry. Maybe you can see some big changes have happened to the quilt. I had that yellow heart on a darker pink, but didn't have enough of it to make it work. Sadly the yellow heart doesn't show up very well on the much lighter pink that I had available when this came back out. So though the top is sewn together, I'm not done. I see from this photo that I have fabric for a border, I will have to do some measuring to see if I have enough of it to use on the quilt now that I've enlarged it. There is also the issue of making the yellow heart stand out a little better. A yellow heart on a pink background might seem to be a little backwards too, but there is a reason.

Many, many years ago I started another quilt using this heart motif. It was intended as a baby quilt for my nephew's daughter Sadie. The project got away from me and took on a life of it's own. Has that ever happened to you? I wasn't using a pattern, just making it up as I went along, but I had a specific thing I wanted to accomplish and, well it just kept growing and growing. It was really quite out of control. And as you might expect, all the while Sadie kept growing and growing too. Oh dear, she wasn't going to get her baby quilt. Which was sad because the colors I had chosen for the quilt were the colors of her room. This picture was taken in my room once the quilt was finally finished.

What had started out as a quilt with one pink scrappy heart became big enough for my queen size bed. I said it got away from me. Sadie finally got her "baby" quilt a few years ago when she was in high school. She graduated in May. Congratulations Sadie!

Well, back to the current project. The rather large pink hearts on Sadie's quilt are appliqued onto a sweet yellow background. I went in and cut away the majority of the yellow from behind the hearts so I was only dealing with one layer of fabric except for the seams where they were sewn down. Thus I have four somewhat smaller yellow hearts leftover. Sadie's quilt also holds the solution to the problem of a yellow heart that doesn't stand out very well from it's pale pink background. I blanket stitched around each of those scrappy hearts with a deep pink embroidery thread. That's what I plan to do with this quilt as well. So I will have some Slow Sunday Stitching to do and will link this post up with Kathy's Quilts tomorrow.

This is Suzette trying to get me to keep Sadie's quilt. It was tempting because I was quite embarrassed that it had taken me so very long and she just wasn't a little girl any more. I gave it to her at a baby shower we both attended, though not inside where the mom to be was opening gifts. I took her out to my car and gave it to her. She was quite surprised, and a little delighted, I think. I hope she is taking it off to college with her.

I'm linking up with SoScrappy for the RSC2020 challenge at http://superscrappy.blogspot.com/