First 6" Heart Completed

Okay I've been in this Chain of Hearts Yahoo group for three years and up to this point not gotten to embellishing any of my six 6" crazy patched hearts as yet for swapping with the members of this group.  Well that is until today!  Yeppers finally I've completed my first embellished heart for the Christmas heart block swap.  Maybe now I'll get cracking and work on the others and one day have some of the awesome works of the talented ladies from within this group for myself - Flickr album loaded with many beauties!

So here's my naked heart block which I then worked on the tatting pieces off and on between trying to decide how to embellish the rest of it. 

Naked block with trims added

 

Tatted tree


So here's what I came up with for the embellishments.  First off I stitched the outline poinsettia at the bottom and then secured the tatted tree in place with gold glass seed beads and decided to leave the background as is.  Then I built the Swaroski crystal snowflake and scatter stitched silver metallic tiny beads in the background.  After that I decided on a silk ribbon poinsettia and leaves with gold seed bead centre cluster and this patch I filled in with scatter stitched gold metallic tiny beads.  I was going to make a button cluster on the right side overlapping the pale green and glitzy brown patches, but a co-worker thought it might be too overpowering and to maybe tat some smaller snowflakes instead.  So I did two simple seam treatments on the two remaining seams before taclking those two patches.  WELL I must say she was very very right and I like this effect very much.  I then scatter stitched the silver metallic tiny beads to fill one of those patches and the snowflake with the irridescent seed beads I used DMC irridescent metallic thread and Colonial knots to fill the space. 
 

Embellished crazy patched heart


Here are some closeup pics:
 

Lower heart section

 

Upper left heart section

 

Upper right heart section

  

Centre heart section

Then it came to "finishing" the block ready for whatever project the recipient would like to use it in.  Now this is the first time to attempt "reverse applique" and it wasn't as troublesome as I first envisioned it to be.  It was explained to me like this:  trace the shape onto the front of the background fabric, cut away the centre fabric leaving 1/2 inch seam allowance, clip curves and turn to the back and press to hold in place.  This I then appliqued in place over the heart ensuring the darker fabrics did not show through by adding iron on interfacing to the back of this fabric first.


Reverse applique snowflake sparkled background fabric



Yep, I truly do LOVE my first 6" heart block and gott make more so I can start swapping with the very talented ladies within this group and maybe make a few for myself to mix and match with theirs'.
 

Completed block ready for swapping very soon