Dancing Hearts Quilt - The Cover Quilt
I have another magazine cover! Dancing Hearts is my newest pattern, and it was featured on the cover of Make Modern magazine's issue 56.
Dancing Hearts is a fun, modern heart quilt that comes alive with strategic fabric placement. It can glow, like it does in this ombre cover version, or you can draw attention to various different secondary patterns depending on the fabrics you choose and how its arranged.
The pattern is now available in the pattern shop as a PDF instant download, or a printed pattern booklet.
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Dancing Hearts sizes and layouts
Dancing Hearts comes with instructions for three sizes:
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Twin: 68" x 102" (this is rather longer than a normal twin, but that's due to how the hearts have to be added as sets of four)
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Square Throw: 68" x 68"
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Baby: 34" x 34"
The baby size also comes with two layout options, having the hearts either point towards the center, or out.
Colour options for Dancing Hearts
Dancing Hearts is super versatile when it comes to fabrics. Whether you make it in solids or prints, ombre or rainbow, or pick your favourite fabric collection, it will be a standout quilt.
I used Kona solids in Ice Peach, Peach, Salmon, Melon, Punch, and Pomegranate for the ombre effect on my quilt. I love how the ombre makes the quilt look like it's glowing. Even though I made a digital mockup before choosing my fabrics, I wasn't quite prepared for the effect ;-)
The backing on this quilt is the Speckled Wideback by Rashida Coleman Hale in Fuchsia. It adds the perfect touch of glam.
For colour inspiration for your own Dancing Hearts quilt, have a look at this blog post here.
Strip-Piecing
Strip-piecing is a method of quilt block constructions where longer strips are sewn together and then cut up into smaller units. The technique is usually used where lots of small strips, rectangles or squares need to be sewn together.
Dancing Hearts uses strip-piecing for making the base unit of the hearts. Using a strip-cutting ruler like the Creative Grids Stripology makes this one a cinch. You can also use Jelly Rolls, but depending on the size of quilt, yardage may be more economical.
On Point Setting
Dancing Hearts gets its name from the heart blocks looking like they are dancing around a center block. This effect is thanks to the on-point setting of the quilt blocks. If you have never made an on-point quilt before, it's not a lot different from a straight setting, just that all the blocks get sewn together in diagonal rows instead of horizontal or vertical. The only real difference is the setting triangles, which are used to fill in around the edges so the quilt ends up with straight edges.
Dancing Hearts is my first pattern using pieced setting triangles, which is part of the reason I gave it a three spool difficulty rating. But the pattern comes with lots of diagrams to help explain how to do this, so you may actually find it not too challenging at all.
Quilting Design
I took my Dancing Hearts quilt to Heather of Red Willow Quilts for longarming. We chose the Angled Squares pantograph for it and I love how it turned out.
The square shapes of the pantograph work really well with the on-point setting of the quilt, balancing it all out nicely.
The Dancing Hearts pattern is available in the pattern shop as a PDF instant download, or a printed pattern booklet.