heart of hearts

Have I ever told you how much I love Valentine's Day? I probably have, and you've probably either forgiven me and chosen to overlook this fact or you've cringed as far away from me as you could possibly get and kept on running. I admit, I love it - the red, the pink, the hearts and glitter, the cute little cards with fabulous punnery, THE CANDY. Yeah yeah, I know. I know it's corny. And I know all the commercials for gross and cheesy jewelry stores and their gross cheesy jewelry and their gross cheesy diamonds are chock full o' gross and cheesy sexist garbage. And some gross and cheesy douchebaggolos refer to it as "steak and beejers day." But.... But.... 

For me it's always been a time to tell those around me that I love them, not in a romantic way but in the purest sense of the word. Without the annoying stress and obligation of Xmess, without some family members' over-the-top wackiness and nerve-rattling of Thanksgiving. Just a day that I stop and make it a point to remember and do something nice for someone I care about. Granted, I know we should try to be kind and good to each other every day. I try, but I'm not always successful at it. So it's just nice to have a day to say, "Hey, you're awesome, and you mean a lot to me. Now let's have some of these homemade peanut butter cups I made for us, I mean, you."

So yeah, this pillow was my first attempt at reverse applique. Inspired by these awesome quilts (omg, that last one! so gorgeous!) by Lu Summers, I have been meaning to try this for some time, so when presented with the challenge of coming up with a new, possibly Valentine's themed, project for February's classes at gather here, I jumped at my chance to make something using this technique. And you know, it was pretty easy and a lot of fun. I can see this having many applications and can't wait to play with it some more.