GO! Hearts

I've taken on a February quilt challenge that said to make a small quilt with hearts for the month. I have to admit, my taste for hearts is relatively limited. Pink is out of the question. But since I take it as a given that French General is always a good thing, I decided I'd give it a try. And look, little hearts in pretty fabrics!

I might be going the long way around on this one, too. I could have just fused them. But I really want to work at least a little (a very little?) on my appliqué skills. I counted on  hearts being easy enough even I could handle them.

My circle venture used that wash-away appliqué fiber I needed to pull out.  This time I'm trying  C&T's paper. So far I think it has a nice texture to it, firm but relatively thin.  It even has the advantage of being lightly fusible. I'm liking that. I won't know what I fully think till I'm further along the project, but so far, it's a win.

I ran some of the paper through the GO! using the 2" hearts die.

And then I fused the hearts to fabric and did some turn under with a glue stick.  I was sitting upstairs tackling this project in the evening and at one point my husband looked over at me and said, "I don't know what you're doing over there but it looks like a real pain in the neck."

It's not like I disagreed with him. But, nevertheless, I soldiered on. So, first there was this little guy:

Adorable. It's enough to make me rethink my general antipathy to hearts.  And it really wasn't all that long before I had my collection of twelve.

Now I've got them tentatively laid out. I plan to sew them down using red thread with a button hole stitch. Odds I can get this done to have up for Valentine's?

And while that's going, I also decided to hop on Barbara Brackman's Western Women sampler for the year. Here's block one:

Yes, French General always looks good, but those Civil War reproductions? They speak right to my heart. Will I bring in more colors with the next blocks or make a quilt of blue and brown? I don't know yet, but I sure do love those soft tones.