Sew a Heart Quilt Block || A Beginner Friendly Tutorial
I got the quilting bug recently and really wanted to make something for the Valentines season that I could share with you here too. I came up with a simple heart quilt block incorporating scraps of fabric. I turned my first version into fun mini quilt to hang up in my sewing room, but I’m planning to turn my second version into a pillow. It’s in the prettiest pinks and purples, so it will look so cute on the comfy chair in my sewing room.
Quilting doesn’t take any difficult skills, I promise! If you can use a sewing machine, you can make a quilt. In this tutorial, you’ll learn to make half square triangles, which is a common technique in quilting. Once you learn that, you can make so many different blocks! All those star blocks you see in quilts use half square triangles.
Watching the video below will tell you step by step how to make this cute scrappy heart quilt block, but I also created a printable version of the pattern, which you can find in my pattern shop. It’s much more convenient to have the instructions printed out in front of you than referring back to the video for the measurements and layout! And, once you have it, you can keep it in your handy sewing binder.
Let’s get to it! This video tutorial includes everything you need to know to make your own heart quilt block, even if you’re a beginner. I try to make sure all my tutorials are accessible for new sewists and quilters, but if you still have questions, be sure and leave me a comment and ask! I’m always happy to help in whatever way I can.
How to Choose Fabrics for a Scrap Quilt
Choosing fabrics for a quilt might be my favorite part. I’m definitely more of a whim driven quilter, so none of the quilts in my home are prepped for by obtaining a kit of matching fabrics, ha! Usually I open my drawer, find a fabric that sings to me and then find more fabrics that go with it. Very scientific, I know!
But, I do have some tips for choosing the right fabrics:
About “lights” and “darks” …
When the pattern calls for lights or darks, that doesn’t mean the fabric has to be all light or dark, it just needs to read light or dark. In other words, a “dark” fabric just needs to have enough contrast from the “light” fabrics in your selection to stand out from them.
Notice the striped orange and white fabric I chose for my heart block. On its own, no one would label that a dark fabric, but against the light fabric I chose for my background fabric, it reads just as dark as the other fabrics in the heart and stands out from the background like it’s supposed to.
Stick to a Color Palette …
… or don’t! But if you don’t, consider a color or two to leave out of the rainbow of choices. In scrap quilts especially, in order for them to look unified as a whole, there still needs to be method to the madness. In my favorite scrap quilt below, you can see there is no purple. Whenever I tried on a scrap with purple colors, it just didn’t go, it changed the vibe from boho to just sort of chaos. So, if you don’t feel like you have developed an eye for that sort of thing, just take my word for it and eliminate a few colors from the picking.
For my heart mini quilt, on the other hand, I did stick with a palette, but I used the Liberty print to guide me. I love that fabric and wanted to make the piece with those bright colors, which is out of the box for me, so I chose that print and then grabbed other fabrics from the drawer that matched and enhanced it.
Which brings me to my next tip …
Only choose fabrics you love.
This seems obvious, but I’ve seen people use a quilt as a project to just use up fabrics, even if those fabrics are blah cottons that got handed down to them or they bought a long time ago and never used because they don’t really like them any more.
This is a mistake! A quilt is a lot of work, even a mini quilt, and it’s going to be displayed in your home most likely, so it’s really not the thing to use your less than desirable fabrics on. Use the fabrics that will make you smile every time you look at it.
And along those lines, I’m pretty ruthless about choosing fabrics … if something looks a little bit off, is just not quite the right color, or just feels like I’m making do, to avoid going to the store, I eliminate it. I’d rather wait until I find just the right thing than have a fabric in my quilt that I really will never think looks right.
What to Do with Your Heart Quilt Block
You don’t always have to commit to a full size quilt to scratch the quilting itch. I’ve written a huge blog post about things to quilt that aren’t actual quilts and I’m taking my own advice with this heart block. I made my first version into a mini quilt, but with this one from the video, I plan to make a pillow and I’ll film that process too and show you next week.
In the mean time, I have a quilted pillow tutorial here. And for a mini quilt, you can follow the exact process that I used to make the oversize hot pad. The quilting and binding will be exactly the same to make your heart block into a mini quilt! You can also buy from my shop the printable version of those instructions OR a printable version of just the binding method. It’s a brilliant binding method with no hand sewing!
You can of course make many heart blocks if you get on a roll and put them together into a quilt. I have a beginner quilting series that can teach you all the ins and outs of quilting that will help you if you’re new to quilting.
Or you can make a table runner, that would be so cute for Valentines Day and you’ll love taking it out every year in February and being reminded of your beautiful work!
I hope you enjoy this project :)
Cheers!
Nikki
