After hexie flowers, making jewel heart blocks is probably my next favourite thing to stitch when I need a simple project to take my mind off other things.
I find them so charming and playful, and I enjoy picking fabrics out of my stash and scraps, deciding how I want my hearts to look and piecing the blocks together.
In the tutorial below I share my tips for cutting fabric, basting the jewel paper template and how you can piece your hearts together.
I hope you enjoy creating your own precious jewel hearts and creating beautiful projects with them.
Step One – Templates & Fabric
There are two main things you’ll need to make jewel hearts, Jewel Paper Templates and fabric scraps.
The measurement of a jewel is taken from the three shorter sides and the two longer sides are double the short side. For example on a 1” Jewel template each of the three short edges will measure one inch, and the two longer edges will each measure two inches.
When it comes to selecting your fabric the one thing you need to consider is that you need enough fabric to cover two jewel papers to make your heart.
If you’re going for a scrappy look be sure to select fabrics that are a mix of high and low volume, different tones that harmonize together. Mixing florals with stripes, ginghams and spots works really well and don’t be afraid to mix in solid fabrics too. It’s totally fine to choose a specific colour scheme and still achieve a lovely scrappy look.
Jewels come in lots of different sizes. In my shop I sell paper templates as small as 3/8″ all the way up to 1.5″.
Jewel Paper Pieces
Pre-cut paper jewel shapes for use in English Paper Piecing.
Step Two – Cutting
When cutting your fabric make sure you are adding no less than a quarter inch seam allowance. I like to cut a slightly bigger seam allowance of 3/8″. You can use an acrylic template to cut your fabric with a rotary rotary cutter, or if you’re like me and want to get through this step quickly, just hold your paper against your fabric and cut around with good fabric scissors, eyeballing the seam allowance as you go.
One thing to consider when cutting your fabric is the direction of the fabric pattern. If it’s an organic all over pattern you should be fine to cut out your jewel any which way. If it’s directional then you are going to want to consider how the pattern is going to sit on the jewel once your heart has been pieced.
The top two hearts here show an all over organic pattern, the first is a very small scale, the second a little bigger. The bottom two hearts show how a larger pattern can look. You may want to swap your hearts around to get the most pleasing look when it comes to large scale patterns.
The heart blocks here show you how to place your templates on a directional gingham pattern. You can see just by switching the jewels around you can get two very different looks. You may wan to take care and try and pattern match your jewels also.
Here you can see how to place your templates on a directional stripe pattern. Again, you can see just by switching the jewels around you can get two very different looks.
Step Three – Basting
You can choose to thread baste or glue baste your jewels. I prefer to glue baste so I’m going to share that technique with you today. Whether you are glue or thread basting, the important thing to remember is to baste each jewel the same way so that the little ‘ears’ nest neatly together.
1 & 2 – Start by gluing down the bottom seam of the jewel.
3 – Now we are going to work our way around anti-clockwise and glue down the next short edge seam. (For thread basting I suggest folding the bottom seam down, then the next seam down, same as glue basting, and place a double stitch in the corner of these two edges)
4 – Glue the first long edge seam down. (For thread basting, fold the long edge seam down and place a tacking stitch in the corner of the seam with the short edge)
5 – Glue the next long edge seam down. (For thread basting, fold the second long edge taking care to make sure the fist long edge stays folded on the back neatly and make a tacking stitch through the seams of the jewel tip)
6 – Glue the last short edge seam down. (For thread basting, fold the last short edge down and do a tacking stitch in the seam corner where the long and short edges meet, then do another taking stitch through the seams where the two short edge corners meet. To finish weave your needle and thread through the very bottom seam a couple of times to secure the thread and snip.)
Step Four – Piecing
When piecing jewel hearts I like to start where the short edges meet as it is easiest to line them up here and stitch down the long edge to the jewel tip, or bottom of the heart block.
I always do a locking knot (figure eight knot) at the start and end of each stitched edge. Once I have stitched down the long edge I place a knot and then weave my needle and thread back up through the folded seam a little before cutting my thread.
Here is my heart block stitched together.
Here is the back of my heart block, you can see that the little ears are sitting neatly against each other. This is why we make sure we baste each jewel the exact same way, so that the ears neatly nest together and sit flat.
Step Five – Connecting Your Heart Blocks
To connect your heart blocks and create a quilt or small project, you can stitch them together using one of the methods below:
Strip Piecing – for this method you would sew one long strip of hearts together the width you want your quilt or item to be. You then start at one end of this strip and piece the next row of heart blocks on. You can also just stitch all the rows individually and then piece the rows onto each other.
Randomly – for this method you would just start with one heart block and then stitch heart blocks around it and continue to work your out and around. This is more of an organic way to piece your blocks together. Eventually you might square it off once it gets to the desired size.
Block Piecing: for this method you would stich small sections or ‘blocks’ of hearts together and then piece theses blocks together to form your quilt or item.
This diagram shows how your jewel hearts will be laid out once stitched together. You will see that every second row of hearts is upside down. The dashed lines indicate where you will trim the sides of your quilt or item when finishing off for adding borders or binding.
This diagram shows the individual stitched heart block rows before they are pieced together.
To add or not to add diamonds, that is the question…
If you want your heart block rows to all be facing the right way without every second row being upside down then you will need to add in rows of connecting 60 degree diamonds. The diamonds must be the same size as your jewels and match the short edge length of the jewel shape. So, if you are using a 1” jewel, you will need a 1” 60 degree diamond.
This diagram shows how you can use 60 degree diamond shapes to connect your jewel hearts so that they all sit the right way up.
This diagram shows the individual stitched heart block rows and diamonds before they are pieced together.
Now that you know how to make jewel hearts, what can you make with them? So many things…
Quilts of all different sizes
Bags and pouches
Cushions
Table runners and placements
You can even applique individual heart blocks onto other quilt blocks, projects or even clothing.
Jewel Heart Pouch Pattern
The Jewel Heart Pouch is an easy hand sewing project to create a pretty pouch to hold all of your sewing essentials.
This is an easy ‘pick up and put down’ project when you can only spare a few moments of time for a bit of slow stitching. It’s a great project for beginners to EPP who want to try a different shape to the humble hexagon. It’s also great for raiding you fabric scraps.
I use my pouch to carry my sewing essentials and it travels between project baskets pending on what I feel like working on. Of course it could be used to carry all sorts of things, journaling items, small sewing or yarn projects, book or toiletries.
I hope you have found this tutorial on making jewel hearts helpful and that you have fun playing with and making your own beautiful jewel hearts.
There is currently a sew-along running called Connecting Hearts where we are making Jewel Heart Quilts. This is a casual sew-along with no real end date, just a way for us to all connect as we stitch up a bit of love.
You can also find a video tutorial on how to make jewel heart blocks and stitch them into a quilt over on my YouTube channel.
Want to Learn More About EPP or Improve Your Skills?
Discover how to create mindful moments in your day to day by learning the gentle craft of English Paper Piecing. This comprehensive guidebook will not only answer all your English Paper Piecing questions, but it will inspire you to slow down and create mindful moments just for you.
Miss Leela’s Guide to English Paper Piecing will help you master the techniques of this traditional form of quilt making. You’ll discover the origins of English Paper Piecing, be able to build a tool kit of the essential tools required and learn the techniques so that you can confidently create your own beautiful heirloom quilts and items that can be handed down the generations.