Ticker Tape Heart Block Challenge

You're invited to join a 3 day block challenge! From May 31-June 2, dig into your favourite scraps to make a Ticker Tape Heart block with the free pattern and daily emails to walk you through each step. These blocks are so much fun to make!

Register here for the challenge

The Ticker Tape Heart block is a combination of piecing and applique. The piecing goes together pretty quickly (that's day one!), then comes the fun of playing with your scraps to find the perfect pieces to applique to fill in the heart (day two) and stitching them down to secure them (day three).

I couldn't decide what colour heart to make while preparing for the block challenge, so I made a rainbow of them! These 9 blocks are perfect for a baby quilt, with the addition of some 2" sashing and a 4" border.

My Mother's Day flowers made good photo props!

To fussy cut, or not to fussy cut, that is the question!

Once the hearts were pieced, I started digging through my various scrap boxes to cut the applique pieces. It was fun to see what scraps I had that could be fussy cut to add an extra element of surprise to the block.

I particularly like this little snowflake.

And these flowers.

And these clouds.

Fussy cutting isn't usually my thing, but it was fun to do just a little of it for these blocks. If it's not your thing, either, you can totally skip it. Most of my pieces aren't fussy cut, as you can tell from the other pieces in these pictures.

What can you do with your Ticker Tape Heart block?

The first time I made Ticker Tape Heart blocks, in January 2022, I added a border to one block, to make a mini quilt. The instructions for this mini quilt are included in the pattern you'll receive on day one of the challenge.

I also made a table runner with three blocks, and those instructions are included in the pattern, too.

And as I've already mentioned, this time around I've made 9 blocks for a baby quilt. You decide if you want to make just one block so you can join in the fun or if you really want to play with your scraps and make enough for a throw quilt, or anything in between. Whatever you decide, I can't wait to see your Ticker Tape Heart block(s)!

Join the challenge here

To Him

Devotion for the week...

I mentioned last week that I'm reading the book of Acts during my morning devotions lately, and today's devotion comes from that book again. Last week I read about Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, which I had also read several times while preparing the devotions for the Moments with Jesus QAL and Devotional Journey. That story led to two devotions during the QAL, and even still I hadn't noticed what I noticed when I read it again last week. Isn't it amazing that God's word always has something new for us?

We know the apostle Paul as one of the great men of the Bible, but the beginning of his conversion story paints him in a very different light. "Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers. So he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the Way he found there. He wanted to bring them—both men and women—back to Jerusalem in chains" (Acts 9:1-2). Yikes! Not only was Saul, later to be known as Paul, not a believer, he was trying to kill or imprison as many believers as he could! Eliminating the believers in Jerusalem wasn't good enough for him, either; he had to take his persecution on the road and see who he could capture in Damascus, too.

"As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?'

"'Who are you, lord?' Saul asked.

"And the voice replied, 'I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do" (vv. 3-6).

From that moment on, Saul served Jesus and taught everyone he could that Jesus was the Messiah. His conversion isn't the focus for today, though. Instead, I want us to really see what Jesus said to Saul: 'Why are you persecuting me?' And then, 'I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting!'

Jesus didn't ask why Saul was persecuting the people who believed in Him, He asked why Saul was persecuting Him, as if it was Jesus Himself that Saul was hauling out of homes and into prison.

Whenever I've thought about that in the past, I thought about it kind of like, 'Saul is hurting believers, which makes Jesus sad.' This time, though, I thought of Matthew 25:37-40, where He says, "Then these righteous ones will reply, 'Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing?  When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?'

"'And the King will say, 'I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!'" That story about our eventual judgement says that whenever we help people, Jesus counts it as if it had been done unto Him.

Jesus' words to Saul on the road to Damascus show the flip side of that; whatever harm we do to others, Jesus sees that as if it had been done unto Him, too. That's a sobering thought, isn't it?

Ombre Twirl

Monday was what I call Stash Artists Day. On the first Monday of each month, I send an email to Stash Artists members about the devotion for the month, the new block for our BOM, and in alternating months the upcoming Sew Together Session or the new pattern. Stash Artists doors will be opening again next month, so join the waitlist if you want to be notified when you can join us. 

May is a pattern month in the membership, which means I can share Ombre Twirl now that the members have access to this new pattern.

I designed Ombre Twirl a year or more ago so I'm glad it made it to the top of the list so I could finally make it!

The Ombre Twirl block uses squares in light, medium, and dark values to create the ombre effect. I discovered some interesting things about my stash while choosing the fabrics for the squares, like that almost all my red fabrics are the same value! That's why there's no red block in the quilt; I couldn't get a nice light, medium, dark progression. I also found that my blues are primarily dark, though there are enough lights and mediums mixed in there that I could make some blue blocks. It was a lot of fun digging through my scraps and my stash to find the right fabrics to put together!

I used my Accuquilt Go machine to cut the scrappy squares and the background strips, which made the cutting go really fast. I don't always remember to pull out the Accuquilt, unless I'm looking for a way to occupy the childcare littles with something different, but I'm trying to use it more often. It's especially helpful for cutting up scraps, since I can't easily cut multiples at once with the rotary cutter, like I can when I'm cutting from yardage.

I kept thinking about how to quilt this one while I pieced the blocks. I figured I would probably outline the scrappy strips, then quilt something in the squares and something else in the background. I couldn't decide what to quilt, though. In fact, every time I thought about it, I felt quite a bit of resistance, like I didn't really want to quilt that much detail. When I thought about quilting a simpler, all-over design, I was much happier with that idea.

That had me thinking about how my go-to quilting style has changed over the years. I used to do a lot of really small, dense quilting, but now I find myself more interested in open, loose designs. I'm not sure there's a reason for the change, though it may be because I'm making more scrap quilts and all-over quilting seems to fit them better. It might also be that by the time I get to the quilting stage I'm usually excited about the next quilt I want to start, and all-over quilting tends to be faster. Whatever the reason for the shift, I'm still having fun with the free motion quilting, so it's all good.

I've done meander quilting with loops and flowers or loops and hearts, but this is the first time I combined all three. I mostly did two loops then a flower then two loops then a heart. I say mostly because there were a few times I got confused about what should have been next, and a few times when I needed a third or even fourth loop to work my way out of a small space before I could do a heart or flower. The beauty of this kind of quilting is that it really doesn't matter if I make a 'mistake'. No one is ever going to pay enough attention to trace a line to make sure I quilted the motifs in the right order!

I pieced together scraps of Warm and Natural batting for this throw size version of Ombre Twirl. When I'm piecing scraps of batting together, I cut the edges I'm going to join with a rotary cutter, then sew them together with a wide zig zag stitch. I tend to avoid piecing batting for anything larger than a baby quilt, since I find it hard to sew long seams of batting without getting ripples, but I only needed to join two pieces and it went fine this time. 

I wasn't at all interested in piecing the back, though, so off to my LQS I went. I found this pretty teal swirl wideback, so I didn't have to sew even one seam for the back. I love fabrics with swirls, so this was an easy choice.

How many pieces of sea glass can you spy in the picture?

While I was shopping for the backing, this grey print caught my eye. I loved the colourful x's, so I picked it up for the binding. Normally I would choose a scrappy binding for a scrappy quilt, but I really love how this print frames the quilt, especially since it's just a bit darker than the solid grey background.

I took Ombre Twirl to the beach along with Shining Through, on one of the few sunny days we've had recently. There was only a slight breeze, but it was still enough to make the quilts fly when they were clipped onto the backdrop stand. Here are a couple of the outtakes 🤣

This one is my personal favourite. I think the quilt was trying to do a magic carpet impersonation!

When the quilt actually hung straight, the sun shining through it was so pretty!

Once I finished taking quilt pictures, I wandered around on the rocks for a while, soaking up the sunshine and the sound of the waves. I found a few pieces of sea glass, including a pretty purple one! I tried my hand at stacking the sea glass for a couple of pictures before I headed home, and I liked how this one turned out.

I can't wait to see the Ombre Twirl quilts made by Stash Artists members now that they have the pattern! And remember, get on the waitlist if you'd like to join us when the membership doors open in June.