The Last Block

We're heading over to Erik and Mae's house for Father's Day this morning. Erik texted me last week and asked if we were doing Eggs Benedict for Father's Day. I told him we were if he was cooking. Then we made a deal...I'm making the Hollandaise and he's doing everything else. Cooking with my kiddo sounds like great fun to me. Both of my sons are good cooks, which is nice. They didn't learn it from me...really. I didn't learn from my mother either, but that's another story. So anyway...I'm here bright and early with my morning update.

The last block for the Solstice Challenge is finished!!!!! I can't say I'm sorry to see this one finished. It seemed like a good idea when I started it, and I know I'm going to love the finished quilt, so it's all good. Some of the quilt-along folks are way ahead of me. If you want to see some gorgeous finished quilt tops, check it out right here, and be sure to scroll down to the linky party to see all the quilts.

So anyway, the last block is called "Summer Rose," and mine is to celebrate the coming Summer Solstice.

Since I've been thinking about the long trip we're planning this fall, I've been considering how to take along some things to work on without dragging along my entire stash. Space is at a premium in the RV, and so I need to minimize the amount of crap I bring. With that in mind, I'm starting to kit up finished projects that need only to be sewn together. This is the first one I've done, but I think I'll have a few more before summer is over. 

There won't be a lot of sewing time on our trip because we're always so busy sight-seeing, but I am planning to do some sewing along the way. One thing I'll be making are these little hearts for the I Found A Quilted Heart campaign. I made the first two yesterday. Since I was winging it after looking at some of the hearts on the website, I made this one first and learned how to do it better in the process. With this one, I stitched through the hole on the tag, but I wasn't particularly happy with that. 

Here's how it looks from the back.

I'll still leave this one for someone to find, but having made one, I knew how to do the next one better. Wanna see what I did? I hope so because I'm just about to show you. 

So I grabbed some scraps that were sitting on my sewing table and made a little quilt sandwich.

Then I used a cookie cutter template to draw the heart.

Then I cut all three pieces at the same time (two fabrics and some batting) using my pinking shears.

But I didn't want the batting coming all the way to the edge, and so I took the sandwich apart and trimmed it by about a quarter inch all the way around.

Then I put the quilt sandwich back together...

Then I was ready to make the tag. The note tags are available on the website right here, and there are two kinds to choose from. They are printed out on a sheet and then cut to size. It's suggested they be printed on card stock, but I was having trouble getting that to run through my printer the way I wanted. I decided to print it on regular printer paper and then glue it to the card stock using a glue stick.

And then I used a hole punch to punch a hole.

On the other side, I wrote...

Then I threaded through some scrap ribbon and pinned it to the heart for sewing.

I sewed all the way around leaving a quarter inch seam allowance. As in free motion quilting, I pulled the bobbin thread to the top

and then buried the thread tails for the sake of tidiness.

And these are supposed to be "quilted" hearts, so I stitched again inside the first row of stitching.

Here's how it looks on the back side.

These took no more than ten minutes to make. Pretty simple, huh? Now it's ready to be sown into the wild for some random person to find. I'll probably leave one somewhere today, but I'm saving the other for our walk on Monday.

That's all I have for you today. Just one more catch-up project to do with the Monday Mini Sew-along, and then I'll be ready to get started on the blue jay quilt. Happy Father's Day to any fathers who might be reading.