Spill Your Heart Out with Our Valentine Challenge! (There’s a FREE Pattern as Well)

Beyond that, though, Valentine’s Day is all about celebrating aching, hopeful, yearning . . . hearts. I can’t help it: I love a romantic ending. To me, every heart beat is an opportunity. As long as your heart thumps in your chest, you’re alive and you can do anything–like sending us a valentine for our challenge (click that heart icon for details!). We’ll award prizes and display the collection of entries in our newly inaugurated See How We Sew gallery (click for a preview) through the end of February.

Be mine Jack Sparrow, you black-hearted rogue!

Jack Sparrow’s valentine (click here to download PDF) was so much fun to make that I’ve placed the instructions in our Pattern Library to share. Also, take a look at my list of heart words and phrases before you start; you just might find unexpected inspiration for your own riff. At last count, after an evening spent in hearty brainwork, my snarky eldest son and I came up with an easy 114, and we’re still finding stupidly obvious ones we missed.

If I’ve whet your appetite for valentine fare, you can find much theme-appropriate creativity online. It’s astonishing to see the extent of the heart-shaped craft and quilting universe collected on image-compiling websites like