February 14, 2021

There were two heart-themed bonus blocks remaining in my Splendid Sampler series and this was the year to get them done.

These small hearts were meant to be pin cushions but I didn’t think my girls had much use for one. I enlarged the hearts slightly and made them into cards. The heart outline is made of French knots – a lot of French knots. Once the cards were put together I decided they would be too hard to machine quilt so I hand quilted them. I don’t hand quilt very often but on a small project I rather enjoyed it.

This was a larger pattern but there was something about the pattern I didn’t like so I changed it up and added a border. I had no problem making all those little blocks and it hardly made a dent in my string bucket. I struggled with the quilting but after ripping the stitches out three times I wasn’t changing it again. When I took a short break I thought maybe when I got back to it I’d be luckier – and then this thought came through my head – it isn’t luck, it’s skill.