"I Heart You" Quilt (Boy Version)

 I love all of the Modern Holiday quilt patterns by Then Came June and Pen + Paper Patterns!  One of my goals this year is to make one of each Modern Holiday quilt for each one of my kids...I have two kids, a girl and a boy.  I sometimes struggle with choosing more "boy" themed fabrics.  When selecting fabrics, I tend to go with whatever I'm drawn to...which is usually bright colors, florals, and both modern and vintage prints.  But when I quilt for other people, I try to think about what they would like as well.  When I saw Riley Blake's Wild at Heart fabric line, I knew my son would love the bears and animal tracks so that's what I picked for my boy version of the "I Heart You" quilt pattern!  

The most challenging part of this quilt was getting all the heart points to match up perfectly...I got better with each heart, but they're still not perfect.  I'm still learning to embrace all the imperfections of my quilts.  I know when a quilt is finished, I'm the only one who sees these "flaws."  If you're new to quilting, I think one of the best pieces of advice I can give you is not to stress too much about all of your seams matching up perfectly and your blocks being perfectly square.  I mentioned this on my previous post, but perfection is not the goal.  When you make mistakes, you are learning, and that should be your focus rather than all the flaws that no one else is going to notice. 

For the background of these hearts, I chose some low volume white and black prints.  The more I quilt, I'm finding that I really love the scrappy look of putting different prints and fabric lines together.  When I first started quilting, I mostly chose to use fabric lines where all the fabrics and colors already coordinated.  There is nothing wrong with doing this, and if you're a newer quilter I think it can actually take some of the pressure off of the initial planning stage of quilting which can be overwhelming at first with all the different choices.  But I'm starting to break out of this habit, and I'm experimenting with putting prints together from different fabric lines.  Pulling different fabrics from my stash when planning a new quilt project is becoming my new favorite thing! 

I also just purchased Rachel Hauser's book The Quilter's Field Guide to color, which I'm super excited to dive into!!  It's a workbook that comes with pull out color swatches that you can manipulate to form different color combinations.  I'm hoping it will inspire me to look at color in a different way.  The bright yellow inside cover of the book alone already has me feeling super inspired!! 

Learning to quilt really is such an exciting and fulfilling journey.  It never gets boring because there is always something new to learn, whether it's new quilting techniques, new block designs, new color combinations, or new fabrics to play with.  I believe we were all born to be creative and we are called to express that creativity in different ways.  I didn't choose quilting; quilting chose me, and I am so grateful for this creative journey I am on.