I remember making this block, waaaay back at the start of the Splendid Sampler in early 2016. The heart in the lower right corner came out very uneven because I didn’t pay attention to my seam allowance. As a result, the block was the wrong size and was noticeably crooked. I left it on my sewing table for two days, just looking at it and wondering if I could make it work, before I finally decided to unpick and remake that corner. It took less than an hour to fix and it came out just fine in the end. The takeaway lesson for me there is that I spent a lot more time worrying about it than I spent fixing it, and if I’m in doubt, I should just rip it out.

I wanted the quilting to emphasize the roundness of a traditional heart shape rather than the angled edges of these pieced hearts. I stitched in the ditch around each heart to pop it up from the background first. In each little heart, I quilted a heart-within-a-heart shape, using the traditional rounded heart. In the large heart shape, I quilted two hearts about an inch apart and then quilted something like ribbon candy in between them. After stitching around most of the edge of the block — apparently I missed a small spot — I called it done.

I considered quilting an allover meander in the background but decided to leave it alone for a softer look.

Lots of Love is block 3 of the Splendid Sampler and was designed by Melissa Corey.