Pixel Hearts Quilt in McCall’s Quilting

Well the January/February 2024 McCall’s Quilting print version is now available. I can’t wait to get mine!! It should be arriving any day now!!!

My quilt, Pixel Hearts, is in this publication and I thought I would share with you how I went about the process of making this quilt. My hope is that this will make someone else decide to experiment like I did!!

I have always been drawn to the pixelated type quilts. I had the idea for this pixelated quilt and drew it out on paper first. I then planned it out in EQ8, just to make sure it would all work as I thought. Once I had my plan, I cut a bunch of 2 1/2″ squares in all different shades of pinks, reds, and neutrals. Fortunately, I know a quilter or two that could help me come up with a good variety of fabrics for this quilt. LOL!! You know who you are!!

Next, I decided I would lay it out on my design wall to see how this all would play out. On paper and in my EQ8 program it looked good, but I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out with all of these 2 1/2″ squares.

I started with the outer edge of the large heart.

My vision had the darker fabrics on the outside, and then working towards the inside with medium value fabrics, and then light value fabrics. And then using the neutrals for the background.

The biggest help with figuring this out was taking pictures in gray scale. If a certain value fabric square was out of place it showed up very quickly on the black and white pictures!!! This gave me the opportunity to move pieces around until I had just what I wanted!!

Once I had the center section all figured out then I started working on filling in the background and the smaller hearts.

I decided that there was a lot of 2 1/2″ squares to sew together, so I decided to use Bosal Fusible 2.5″ grid. This stuff is amazing!!!!! It is available in many different stores and comes in different size grids!!

I worked in manageable lengths and widths that would fit on my ironing station.

First, I took the squares off of the design wall and laid them out on the Bosal Grid in the correct order. Then I ironed the pieces down to fuse them to the grid. Now they were all set and I didn’t have to worry about whether I was going to be able to keep them in order or not!!! Phew!!!

The next step was to put right sides together along the dotted lines and sew the 1/4″ seam. It went amazingly well.

Here is the entire quilt top sewn together!! It went together so easily with using that fusible grid!! It also helped to keep the rows straight and even!!

Then I was on to the quilting!!! I posted a YouTube video of how I did the quilting for this quilt. I did a very simple orange peel (continuous curve) in the hearts and an overall feather in the rest of it. And of course I used my Handi Quilter Amara for doing all of this!! Superior Threads So Fine 50 was my thread of choice and the batting was from Quilters Dream Batting!!

Some additional thoughts on this quilt and process…..I am going to try to design more quilts using the Bosal 2.5″ fusible grid. I absolutely fell in love with it!! In fact, I may have another surprise or two planned for later this coming Spring. Also, I loved the design process in this quilt and the fact that I was using up scraps!!

I hope that you will enjoy this magazine if you decide to purchase one. Both the digital and newsprint versions are available directly from Quilting Daily, if you can’t find them on your local newstand.

Thanks for following along!!! I wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Quilting!!!