Happy Valentine’s Day! I wanted to share with you all some of my art quilts that feature hearts. Below, this features crazy quilt techniques, embellished with found objects. You can see my signature on this: created in 2005! I’ve always appreciated this sentiment from Liz Kettle, from her Plethora of Pinked Hearts tutorial she shared with us years ago: “When I was in my formative art years, hearts were passé, trite and so unsophisticated Somewhere along the way I realized that even if they were trite in the ‘serious’ art world I had fallen in love with them! I make my art to please myself these days, so even if the sophisticated shock artists of the world roll their eyes and dismiss me as trite... I am contented with my hearts.” Love the locket half, and the fun beaded fringe. The charm titles this one: Love. Detail above: needlefelted heart that combines scraps of wool, cotton, silk and more, encrusted with beads. I’ve often used vintage wooden clothes hangers to hang my art quilts. Beaded details: left, the stripes on these yellow beads were perfect to enhance the vintage fabrics grid, and my blue flower beads were a near-exact match to embellish this border! Beaded blue wool hearts appliquéd to needlefelted bases, then stitched to a hand-dyed wool base that had been bordered with cotton and machine quilted. Detail above: it’s fun to sneak in accent beads, like this ladybug, to see who notices. Remember, Valentine wishes don’t have to be red or pink or lacy to be heartfelt!
