Valentine's Day Table Topper

Well, I am a day late with this post.  I've been working on some walking pneumonia here and finally had a night with some sleep...until a certain kitty named Sophie, decided that mommy always gets up at 2am and it's 4am now, so she should really be getting up... so after several paws on my face, she finally thought...I'll just sit right on her bladder.  Well, that did it!  I was up!  Hey, I actually got 6 hours sleep, I feel pretty good, I'm gonna finish up this project.

I started this project with a fat quarter of fabric from Sugar Hill by Tanya Whelan for Free Spirit.  I love this sweet old fashioned rose on the crisp white background with the little hints of blue.

First I cut a 12 inch square. Sorry for the blurry pic, getting use to my new Iphone camera.

Next I cut two 5 inch squares and then cut them again on the diagonal.  (you still have fabric left over from your fat quarter!)

As we have done before, fold your block in half horizontally and press with your iron, fold it again in half the other way, vertically and press again, now fold on both diagonals and press again, this gives you a "grid" to work from when designing your block.

You can go ahead and design and create your block now or you can sew on your tips and do it after.   To place your tips properly, fold each of your small diagonally cut pieces, in half and finger press, line up that crease with the crease in your block and pin in place, I like to pin the ends and the center.  This piece is cut on the diagonal, do not stretch it as you attach it.  I stitch it on with a 1/4 inch seam allowance.

Now, what to put in the block?  I like to scratch out my design ideas on a piece of childrens drawing paper that I purchase in rolls from IKEA.  They are cheap and you can use it for patterns and a host of other uses.  

I wanted to create a Topiary effect with the hearts.   I was thinking about possibly a little blue bird, but opted just to go with the topiary idea.  

I used Pelon to fuse my shapes to my block and then I top stitched them in place with a machine blanket stitch.  I free motion stitched the "trunks".  When finished with my design, I make a quilt sandwich of batting and backing each 20 inches square and proceeded to quilt, free motion around each design.  Then I traced a pretty heart design with a flowing bow from a quilt pattern book and quilted that inbetween the topiaries.  You can't really see it in the picture.    I used Kaffe Fasset fabric for the hearts and binding.  It was just luck the way the fabric worked to come out with the pink on the tips of the topper.  Lots of fun, I hope you will get some creative ideas from this.  I will be teaching a class this next Friday on making Table Toppers, it will be fun to see what our class creates!