I’d been saving this heart block for February, thinking it would be appropriate for the month with Valentine’s Day. But I’m not exactly feeling the love for a block that manages to combine appliqué and curved piecing, two of my least favorite techniques, in a single triangle block.

I did the curved piecing first, so I’d have a “complete” triangle to do the appliqué on. I’m still not a big fan of curved piecing, but at least it was a large and shallow curve.

Then I auditioned different thread colors for the appliqué. The background is kind of blotchy with areas of darker and lighter green, so it was difficult to come up with a single thread that totally fit the bill:

The light thread was definitely too light, especially since the conventional wisdom is to err on the side of darker thread. But the dark green thread was just too dark, and slightly bluer than the shades of olive in the fabric.

So, I ended up going with the medium green thread, which is maybe slightly too light against the darkest blotches, but is just the right amount of oliveness.

Remembering how annoying it was to work on the tip of these triangle blocks with all the weight of the rest of the block dangling down, I opted to start my appliqué with the triangle piece at the tip. It went pretty smoothly, and I was pleased with how well the medium green thread blended in.

I followed it up with the smaller heart, which went as smoothly as appliqué hearts ever go. It seemed like kind of a tight squeeze in the space, but I had carefully marked the location of the inner and outer points of the heart, so I figured it was supposed to come that close to the edge of the block:

Then I tried to pin the larger heart in place, and it just wouldn’t fit. Eventually I realized that I was trying to pin it on upside down, with the point of the heart near the base of the block. Once I rotated it around so that the point of the heart pointed to the tip of the block, it fit just fine.

After I started stitching the larger heart, I finally looked closely at the block photo … and realized I had sewn the smaller heart on upside down too. No wonder it hadn’t fit well in the marked space!

Once I realized my mistake, I carefully picked out the stitches on the smaller heart, and rotated it so it was facing the correct direction:

I don’t think the place where the stitches used to be shows too much on the background fabric, and I really don’t want to start over from scratch and have to do a new curved piecing seam. If it seems like it will be a problem, I’ll just have to make sure to do lots of decorative quilting stitches in that area to cover up the holes where the appliqué stitches used to be.

Speaking of decorative quilting stitches, I completed my February UFO Challenge goal, quilting 18 triangles decoratively on the rainbow quilt, plus finishing one Dear Jane block and sashing two others together:

I don’t have an official monthly appliqué quota for the UFO Challenge, but I feel like I’ve met the unspoken quota for this and several more months, what with all the heart restitching. This one was definitely a heartbreaker.