Love Letters Quilt for Valentine’s Day with All My Heart

Hi! I’m Casey Chatham from Sew Worthy Mama. I create quilt patterns designed with motherhood in mind.

When you think of Valentine’s Day, you probably think of things like candy, flowers, and love letters. My Letters Quilt pattern–featuring blocks of open envelopes with letters inside–becomes “Love Letters” when you make it with pretty Valentine’s Day fabrics! Use the code “RILEY” for 10% off this pattern!

“All My Heart” Fabric Collection for Valentine’s Sewing

The All My Heart collection by J. Wecker Frisch for Riley Blake Designs is perfect for the job! When I saw the collection for the first time, I knew instantly I had to make a Letters quilt.

I love a fabric with a little text for the “letters” in the open envelopes blocks. All My Heart has quite a few options in that department. There are 3 color options with “x’s” and “o’s” scattered about on pink, red, and white. I chose the “XO White” print for my letters fabric. There are 4 color options with a hand script print (called “love letters” in the collection) that would also work great for the letters in this quilt, but I opted for the “XO” since it has less directionality.

In the past, I’ve used solids for the background in other Letters quilts, but I decided to go with the “XO Red” to contrast against the white letters.

I went with various fabrics (see below for a detailed list) in the collection for my envelopes, using the scrappy color way. The pattern also includes an ombré color way. You could choose a more limited palette and arrange it in stripes using the ombré instructions. The ombré color way automatically creates a few extra blocks which can be used to make bonus projects like a pillow or wall hanging. You can also quilt and bind a single block to give as a mini quilted valentine! {IMAGE: bonus project}

Greeting in Red – a print featuring the cutest little square envelopes with heart stickers and postmarks and little lacey edges! The square envelopes echo the design in my quilt pattern, and it was just meant to be! I used this print for the backing and it was 100% the best choice of this whole quilt!

This pattern uses a super efficient piecing method, so it comes together very quickly. I machine quilted mine with a basic grid at about 5″ or so, dividing each block in quarters. I love how the quilting makes the pieces appear smaller without the extra work of making this pattern with many tiny HSTs. Plus, the larger grid size was fast to finish! {IMAGE: the whole quilt showing the quilting if possible}

If you’ve got a few open afternoons or evenings, you can definitely make this quilt before Valentine’s Day, and probably a bonus project or two, too! In fact, you can sign up for my self-paced quilt along, and I’ll walk you through the process with lots of extra tips and video support.

Fabric Requirements

Here are the fabrics I chose and the fabric requirements of each (baby quilt size 40″ x 53″):

• Letters – XO White – 5/8 yard
• Background – XO Red – 1 1/2 yards
• Envelopes – Red Heart Strings, Black Heart Toss, Pink Heart Toss, Black Valentine Tulips, White Valentine Tulips, White Bouquet Toss, Pink Bouquet Toss, White/Red Valentines Thistles, White Valentines Thistles, Pink Candy Wraps – 1/4 yard each
• Backing – Valentine Greeting Red – 2 3/4 yards (this allows 4″ overage for longarming and uses a horizontal seam. Use 3 1/2 yards for a vertical seam, or you can get away with about 1 5/8 yards if you are ok with less than 4″ overage.)
• Binding – Black Candy Wraps – 1/2 yard

Will the Reds Bleed?

One more thing about this collection–does all the red and white together make you nervous? I was really anxious that the reds would bleed onto the whites in the wash. So I added not 1, not 2, but 5 Shout Color Catchers to the wash. I know, probably overkill. But I expected all 5 to come out red from soaking up the bleed. But they all 5 came out the same light gray that they went in as…there was zero bleed! So fear not with these fabrics. They are 100% color fast! In fact, all of the finished quilt photos in this post are post-wash. See the whites for yourself!

Check out my “Pockets Full of Blessings” quilted table runner featuring the I Love Us fabric collection for more Valentine’s Day Quilting!

For more patterns designed with motherhood in mind, visit Sew Worthy Mama or follow me on Instagram. Follow #SWMLetters and post your make there, too!