Penny Love--Finish

After I had finished September's mini Indigo Crossing, it was time to kick things into gear and tackle the October Aurifil mini.  October's designer was Sara Lawson over at Sew Sweetness and she gave to us Penny Love.  You can read more about Sara in Pat Sloan's interview here.

This little mini quilt would make me step once again outside of my comfort zone.  Curves.  Before I could get started, I needed to commit to my fabrics.  I had just finished up working on some Mini Barn Quilts and was still crushing on the fabrics I had used on them.  I had plenty left over so I pulled them for Penny Love.

I cut out the templates provided in the pattern and traced them onto my fabrics.

After everything was cut out, it was time to tackle sewing curves.  My first attempt, I gave pinning a try.

This seemed easy enough.  But once the pins were pulled there was extra fabric on the bottom and I was left with this.

A very bad pucker.  I even got creative and tried pinning from the bottom.

It was better, but still not quite right.  So I stopped and turned to searching on Pinterest.  I ran across a video at She Can Quilt (you can check it out here).  In the video she uses no pins (sounds scary) but watching what she did, made total sense to me and that was the method I ran with.

I realized after I started writing the post that I had became so absorbed making my drunkard's path curves I forgot to take more pictures.  I'll admit, a few squares I had to make more than once in order to get my hearts to sew together correctly.  I struggled getting the curves to match up with the straight lines of the heart.

After I had four hearts I felt fairly happy with, I could piece them together and come up with a quilting plan.  My thought was to do some curvy hearts inside the heart and pebble/bubble the white background.  Maybe the tiny bubbles would create a nice distraction to the eye so you don't notice the small places where the piecing isn't as perfect.  After deciding on my Aurifil  2021 as the all over thread for this quilt, it was time to get started.

I'm glad I settled on pebbling as my back ground filler.  It went fairly quickly and added a great texture to the surface of the piece.

In to time at all I was posting this teaser picture to Instagram until I could get the binding on.

Once again I chose the Susie's Magic Binding method over at 52Quilts.  This binding method has changed the way I finish my quilts.  I used the white on white fabric for my main binding and the gray polka dots from my backing for the flange.

After the binding was attached, I was officially in love with Penny Love.  And Drunkard's Path blocks...bring it!  I no longer live in fear of curves.

So that wraps up my version of Penny Love.  Stay tuned for the November mini Timber, she should be finished really soon ;)

Today I'm linking up with Can I Get A Whoop! Whoop, Needle and Thread Thursday, Let's Bee Social, Sew Cute Tuesday, Free Motion By the River, and Main Crust Monday.