22 Nov Juicy Hearts Quilt
As soon as I saw this new fabric collection called “Falling in Love” by Dani Mogstad for Riley Blake Designs I knew I had to make another version of my Juicy Hearts Quilt. I absolutely love all the little romantic Valentine’s Day details in this fabric collection — from the hearts, roses, X’s and O’s, dainty plaids, soft florals and whimsical love notes. The small scale prints are ideal for my Juicy Heats pattern.
The beauty of this pattern is that it comes together in a snap, as it’s made up primarily of Drunkard’s Path units which I like to sew without the use of pins or glue, making them a relatively speedy block to execute. I’ve written a tutorial below to show you how to make Drunkard’s Path blocks without pins or glue.
One of the most time intensive parts of making this quilt is cutting out all the pieces. The pattern includes the templates which can be used to trace the shapes onto your fabric to cut. I like to use a set of acrylic templates so I don’t have to trace the shapes, I can just cut using a rotary blade and the acrylic shape, it speeds up the process considerably. I highly recommend using acrylic templates if you have them. If not, the paper works just fine too, it just takes a little longer. You can also cut the templates out of card stock or quilter’s template plastic so they’re a little more durable.
How to sew a drunkard’s path unit
There are many tutorials online instructing how to sew Drunkard’s Path units. Typically these curves are sewn with the concave piece sewn on top of the convex piece with the assistance of pins or glue and marking the centre of the units for alignment. That is a great method and if you’re new to sewing curves, you might want to look it up. In this tutorial however, I will show you how I sew Drunkard’s Path units without pins, glue or marking. When I first learned this technique I was skeptical. However, after practicing it with scrap fabric, I was astonished at how perfectly it worked out. This technique was much quicker than the traditional method because of the marking/pinning/gluing steps that are eliminated.
When I cut out all my pieces, I like to organize them into piles according to the order in which I will sew them.
Sitting at your sewing machine, place two pieces that make up one unit on the sewing machine throat plate with the convex piece on top of the concave piece, right sides together, aligning the tops of the curved edges.
Start sewing slowly along the curved edge. Hold the convex piece in your left hand and using your right hand slowly guide both pieces through the machine along the curve. Stretch the convex piece slightly to ease it along the curve as you sew. (Do NOT stretch the concave piece.) With a bit of practice, you’ll get a good sense of how much stretching is required.
Continue sewing slowly along the curve adjusting the convex piece as you go so you don’t make any puckers in the seam. Use the “needle down” function if your sewing machine has it. This helps keep the seam in place as you adjust the fabric.
When you come towards the end of the seam it might be helpful to use a pair of sewing tweezers or a pointy tool to hold the edge of the fabric until the end of the seam has passed under the needle.
It is likely that the ends might not line up exactly flush, but that is okay, the uneven edges will be trimmed off.
Carefully press the curved seam towards the convex piece. Try not to stretch the curve.
Place a square ruler on top of the block with the 5½” mark lined up with the bottom left corner of the convex piece. Make sure you have ¼” seam allowance on the top and right sides of the concave piece.
Trim the block on the right side, and then the top. Rotate the block 180° and trim any excess off the opposite sides.
Tada, you’ve made a Drunkard’s path unit! Repeat this process until all of the Drunkard’s Path units are pieced for your quilt.
Putting it all together
To make each Juicy Hearts block, I lay out all my Drunkard’s Path units and squares to make sure I sew everything together in the correct order.
As I make each block, I like to put them up on my magnetic white board so I can see the layout take shape. To me this is the most exciting part of making a quilt — seeing it come alive!
For the quilting I decided to use soft S‑curve lines evenly spaced about 1.5″ apart. The gentle curve gives this curvy quilt a lot of movement and texture without being distracting from the quilt design itself.
For my binding I chose a 1/4″ red stripe fabric, which reminds me of candy stripes. For my backing fabric, I used this sweet multi-toned pink confetti on white fabric called Blossom “All the Pink”.
My finished Juicy Hearts Quilt
Here are some photos of my finished “Falling in Love” Juicy Hearts Quilt. I can’t wait for Valentine’s Day to come so I can snuggle under it while watching a cheesy rom-com with my hubby…
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