Midnight Crossing - Heart Quilting in Blocks

I was really, really pleased with the piecing on this quilt. The petal FMQ in the sashing and corner posts also met with my sound approval. See end of post for 9/29/22. So now I am even more timid and under more pressure not to muck up the rest. I know I am prone to overthinking things so here is the ongoing saga of my FMQ decision process. 

Decision, decisions! Analysis paralysis! I just bought some heart templates by Amanda Murphy for long arm quilting so of course I wanted to try out my new toy on the blocks. I experimented with different orientations in PowerPoint. Here is what I considered: hearts on horizontal and vertical, hearts on diagonal, hearts of different sizes, hearts with points facing either in or out and any of these options combined.

I decided on large outer hearts pointing out with small inner hearts pointing in all on a diagonal. Then I noticed the hearts in Power Point are rounded and do not have the artsy doubly-curved edges of the template hearts. I practiced the look of several sizes of these stylized hearts with templates on scrap sandwiches. Then I traced the selected heart option on clear page protectors and lay them over a block as a preview.

I did not want to take away from the piecing and the prints. I sure succeeded in not doing that! After all my agonizing, planning, and practicing, my quilting in the blocks barely shows up. Seeing my disappointment, my husband encouragingly knows what to say. "It will puff up more after you wash it." I have to be satisfied with texture and functionality rather than visual impact. On the brighter side, my errors do not show up glaringly, either. Here is the variation in visibility in the stitching on four colors of blocks: orange-centered black or gray, and black-centered mixed or orange.

On a high note, though, after 128 hearts (plus those from practice) I got pretty proficient at using my Good Measure hearts template by Amanda Murphy. They work great and I love them! With the blocks, inner and outer sashings, and corner posts completed, I move on to FMQ decisions for the inner and outer borders.