Free Hearts and Valentines Projects, Patterns, and Tutorials: Updated 2018

Make a pledge to yourself and to those you love this month. Take good care of your own heart with healthy habits and a active lifestyle  and make a comfort quilt, a heart shaped comfort pillow, or some other lovely little heart filled gift of comfort to another..one for you, one for a loved one, and one for someone you may never meet but can still reach out to with love!

And please think of all of the little ones that have been born with congenital heart defects. Every day, all over the world, babies are born with no explainable reason with heart problems that require immediate and often major surgery.

While some might be as minor as leaky heart valves others are so serious that they require immediate life saving efforts and open heart cardiac surgery where the baby has to be place on a cardio-pulmonary bypass (heart-lung) machine while cardio-pulmonary surgeons have to do micro surgical repairs that can take up to 10 hours on tiny hearts that in a newborn is about 1" across.

Please make and donate baby quilts to your own local NICU or PICU in honor of these  precious 'heart babies'!

Whenever we make a comfort quilt or donate a block to a given cause, we are putting a piece of ourselves...our own loving heart...into that donation. Whether they are given to a loved one, heart patients, for cancer care, for hospice donations, or to simply to show our love, faith, and caring...it's wonderful to make and keep heart blocks, quilts and other projects on hand....any time of the year!

From my primary blog With Heart and Hands:

Free Heart Quilt Patterns and Other Valentine Projects Updated 2017

and

My own heart shaped or themed tutorials as well as links to those by others.....connects to another hundred more patterns, tutes and ideas galore......

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!

How To Make A Quillow

 Why make a quillow and not just a quilt?

With high school or college graduations quickly approaching, or for an unexpected birthday or even a great Christmas gift....what better gift to give from the heart than a quickly made 'quillow'? A cross between a quilt and a pillow, it can be as simple as sewing two pieces of 45" x 72" fabric together and adding a pillow section of 18" -20" square......or as complicated as any scrap or quilt pattern pieced design you might choose for the quilt top and pillow portions. Reverse the pocket opening to the top, add straps and you have a wonderful baby quillow for a gift. You can even add extra outside pockets for baby supplies, and use it as a changing pad or play mat!

Full post with photos and tutorial at link below!!!

How to Make a Quillow 

How to Make a Quillow 

 

With directions and photos 

Michele M. Bilyeu 

http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2007/05/making-quillow.html

See my two original posts about different styles that I have made..a third one is in progress..on my primary blog where all tutorials are updated. It just got too complicated trying to update thousands of files on both of my main blogs.

And using a similar concept, I also made:

Make a Re-useable Shopping Bag: Pocket Pouched!

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!

Giving Thanks With Heart and Hands

Free Quilt and Craft Patterns for All of the Winter Holidays: Updated for 2015

                                 Alzheimer's Fidget Quilts 

From Michele Bilyeu With Heart and Hands

Quilts, Lap and Art Quilts that Serve a Purpose and a Cause

http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2015/08/making-fidget-quilts-for-alzheimers.html


Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!

Happy Memorial Day!

Free Patriotic, Sewing and Quilting Patterns, Tutorials and Links

With Heart and Hands

 

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns and encouraging others to join her and make and donate quilts to charitable causes. Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!

Making Prayer Quilts: Modern or Traditional ?

Basics for Making a Cross, Plus, or "Arithmetic" Quilt

and part two

Designing a Liberated Cross Block and Quilt For Mary Lou!

 

The wonderful modern version of  cross or plus sign quilts were actually once known as"Arithmetic Quilts". I share how to make the modern version ..whether small or large..and share my own traditonal Nine Patch version.

"Arithmetic Quilt"

A catchy names for those quilters seeing the cross blocks as plus signs. Creating one, is as simple as doing the match with simple squares to create a block and then adding in other squares/and or rectangles to make the finished block and quilt size you might want!

 And everyone else, think about making one of these for someone you know who might be facing a similar challenge. These are absolutely perfect for a lap quilt during chemo, for someone in a wheelchair or even in bed, if you make one a bit larger.

 

 Making Prayer Quilts

Awareness Ribbons: Cancers/Other Diseases

*Free Breast Cancer Awareness Quilt Patterns

The prayer quilts that I have made in the past, were simple nine patch quilts. They are the easist of all to make, of course. I choose pink and purple for this quilt titled "Hope and Remembrance". It was made in honor of my mother who battled Stage 3b Inflammatory Breast Cancer and survived her 5 year milestone to then get Alzheimer's Disease, which she lived with until her death almost 9 years later!

Now, we have an entire generation of modern quilters who are looking for more diverse value systems and layouts and an entire generation of cross quilts have morphed into 'plus' quilts. So much fun, no matter what you choose to create!

 

Basics for Making a Cross, Plus, or "Arithmetic" Quilt

and part two

Designing a Liberated Cross Block and Quilt For Mary Lou!

and

Making Prayer Quilts

Awareness Ribbons: Cancers/Other Diseases

*Free Breast Cancer Awareness Quilt Patterns

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!

Feeling the Hearts and Valentine Love!

It's February and I've come out from January's woman cave where I have been busy sewing and quilting  Tag and Fidget quilts , making bags, and mug mats.

And because it is February, and we are all getting ready for Valentine's Day, I'm thinking pink, and red, and green, and touches of sweet blue as I have sewn, quilted, crafted, and create for my own Valentines!

Check out dozens of my own projects plus hundreds of other wonderful free tutorials, patterns, links, and lots and lots of inspiration!!!!

And because I am having problems with blogger..I'm linking up to my primary blog 

With Heart and Hands

since this blog seems to think its April Fools and not February and I'm feeling the...

Hearts and Valentine Love

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!

Quilting With Hexagons: Updated for 2014

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem

Quilting With Hexagons

In geometry, a hexagon is a polygon with six edges and six vertices. In nature, it appears in honeycombs, in a turtle's carapace, on the North pole of the planet Saturn, in the micrograph of a snowflake, and in the naturally formed basalt columns form Giant's Causeway in Ireland.

A hexagon is the only shape that will fit inside of a six sided star or Saturn Star (also known as Magan's (Magen's, Mogan's) Star, which is considered the most powerful symbol in the occult. And by the occult, I mean that which has hidden energies not obvious to the human eye, not something that is necessarily evil. However, it comes as no surprise that we talk of 'putting a hex' on others in regards to magical incantations of ill omen. And thus, the hexagon has often been used throughout history and through timed as a carrier of these magical energies.



However, on the flip side, all energies also carry their reverse or polar opposite within, so it also no surprise that the Magan, or Mogan Star can also become the most beautiful of shapes long been held in high esteem by those who love fiber art handicrafts of all kinds.

And, when you connect alternate points of a hexagon, it gives you a hexagram, or a six pointed star, usually called the Star of David...as in the Magen David star quilt, shown above.

English Paper Piecing 1 Inch Hex Triple Ring Flower Pattern FREE to Download
Six circles will fit around a seventh (of the same diameter) dividing the circumference into six equal parts, and the radius of a circle exactly divides into the circumference into six parts creating the six petaled rose we so often see in quilts.

English Paper Piecing 1 Inch Hex Diamond Double Ring Quilt Pattern FREE to Download

Diamond Triple Ring Quilt Pattern

In order to view this document
you will need the latest version
of Adobe Acrobat Reader

Single Ring Hexagon Quilt Pattern FREE to Download

Double Ring Hexagon Quilt Pattern FREE to Download Single Ring Hexagon Quilt Pattern FREE to Download

For some wonderful hexagon quilts and other stitching projects, click on link below:

Michele Bilyeu:  Quilting With Hexagons

 

, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns and encouraging others to join her and make and donate quilts to charitable causes. Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!