Queen of Hearts Mini

I've been eyeing off the Play competition over at Sew Happy Geek. I was keen to enter but had no ideas whatsoever. Then I was talking to my Mum about it. I must bore her stupid with all my quilt chatter! Anyways she suggested I should go ahead and enter and make hay while the sun shines and make my mini quilt double as a dolly quilt for my miss Lulu (who happens to turn two in just over a week). Aha! An idea began to form!

The idea of the Play competition is to make a mini quilt based on one card from a standard playing deck. I decided the Queen of Hearts would suit my girl! Mine is more a loose interpretation of a playing card (don't want it to be looking like I'm raising a gambling girl after all!). Here's what I came up with:

I had planned to applique the Queen in the centre but she had other ideas. She absolutely insisted she be embroidered. Now I'm not a fan of hand sewing so this was a true labour of love to turn my sketch into stitches.

Geez faces are hard to do! I had a tough enough time trying to draw it, but to embroider it! Anyways it came out okay I think, but without the little mischevious smile I had envisioned.

I also filled her little basket up with some hearts. She is the Queen of Hearts after all. Though like my Lulu, she's a touch clumsy, hence one falling out of the basket.

 Now I have to just add in here... I used one of those Frixion pens everyone's been talking about for my embroidery. Can I say how ridiculously impressed I am with those things? I know they aren't everyones cup of tea but they worked beautifully for what I wanted. I also used them to draw in my lines to quilt along, did my quilty thing then just ironed them off. Lines be gone!

Okay for full disclosure, I did try to get all fancypants and FMQ some awesome heart ripples ala Leah Day style. Yeah it didn't work for me. And for the love of all things quilty... FMQ is not fun to unpick. Not fun at all. In fact I think it might rank right up there with Y-seams. I.e. forms of quilty torture doled out by the quilt police.  So straight lines it is. Which I'm good with. Means it's a squooshy soft dolly quilt.

Added a little border made up of a gazillion pinks - mainly Riley Blake and a bit of Vintage Modern mixed in for good measure. Then for the back I cut into my gorgeous Sandi Henderson fabric that I won in a giveaway sometime back. How gorgeous is this?!

So there you have it. My interpretation of the Queen of Hearts for my own little Queen of Hearts.

Happy to say that she loves this already. She tried to take it out to the car (with pins in the binding waiting to be sewn!) to show her brother when we picked him up from preschool. Now big brother wants one just for him - a King though of course. I told him we'll talk about it. For -his- birthday. In September. ;)