Mended Hearts

As most of you already know we are a blended family. I had three children and my husband had two children when we got married two years ago. I started this quilt before we got married...two years later the top is done. Maybe for our 5th Anniversary, he will get the gift I intended to be a wedding present. (D'oh)

Anyway, I started with this Mended Hearts pattern that I got from the quilt show in Henderson Nevada, years before I even met him. I thought it was a great idea as a gift to make for someone else, I never thought it would be applying to me.



I thought it to be quite appropriate for out situation as we not only fill a hole left in each other's hearts but we feel a sense of completion with each other. But since there are 5 other little people in this relationship, I felt they needed to be represented also. So I added little hearts to show them as part of the completion. Since 'the man' is represented in dark green, I thought the boys should be depicted with varying shades of green. Likewise, since I was represented with dark pinks, the the girls are pictured with little pink hearts. I used a white on white rose printed background that I have had forever, I think it was one of the first fabrics I bought when I started quilting and then realized that using white is really not all that common. The pattern was also missing something for me in the design so I altered that just a little.



Center



Instead of having the hearts alternate sides, I kept them all on the same side, then on the mended hearts at the bottom, I filled them in. I have been trying to decide on borders. I am not sure if I am going to do a pink border with a green border sort of hugging around it (showing his protective nature) or if I will do the border sort of log cabin style with pink on one side and green on the other.



Inner Borders



I also picked out a fabric to use as a border when I originally bought all of the fabrics two years ago. As things go, I am not really feeling it anymore. I had picked it because it had a fairly balanced blend of both the pink and green, but now it feels sort of old fashioned to me and I just don't know about it anymore. What you think?

Outer Border

Maybe if I do a slim border it won't be so 'tea party'...I don't know.

UPDATE

Opted to skip the outer border and just use the floral print for the binding. I didn't have enough to use as backing so I used the same white as the background. The original pattern has very minimal hand quilting on it. I also did very little quilting on this one. Here it is...the first {hopefully of many} quilted wall hangings in our house.

He liked it by the way. ;)