Happy Hearts – February Twinchy Challenge – Part 1

This was a real challenge to me, trying to make hearts which had bright contemporary colors and still use threads in my stash. But didn’t my bellpull turn out great?

I used a taupe metallic (72) from Kreinik for the grid and all analogous color schemes, mostly keeping the colors medium to light and all the backgrounds light. The analogous colors keep things calm instead of frantic and the lighter values make it, I think, happy.

I also picked geometric patterns and kept the stitches simple. Since there are eight of them, I’m going to split the explanation of it into two parts. The first four will be today and the next four on Tuesday.

If you want to make your own heart sampler begin by drawing out the 2″ squares on your canvas. I have eight on a 6″ x12″ canvas. Then using the heart outlines in this post trace a heart into each square. Then mix or match these patterns or others and threads from your stash into your own design. (The instructions will be available in an eBook in April).

The top left heart uses the same pattern as the original heart Twinchy. I used the grid metallic for the zigzag lines, Wild Berries Watercolours for the overdye, two Pebbly Perles (one dyed by me), and an overdyed floss of unknown origin for the heart. The background is done in Basketweave using a hand-dyed silk ribbon.

The top right heart is stitched using a yellow-green color scheme with a sapphire blue accent. The blue and bright yellow-green are both Watercolours, the light yellow-green is a Dinky Dyes silk and the darker yellow-green is EPiC crewel wool.

The center is a Scotch Stitch over five threads. It is surrounded by two borders of mitered Straight Gobelin over three threads. The remainder of the heart is stitched in Basketweave.

The background is Horizontal Diagonal Cashmere.

The next heart on the left is stitched in Irregular Jacquard. By varying the number of stitches in the vertical and horizontal legs, you get an irregular version of the stitch. The longer stitches are done with Rainbow Linen, the shorter ones done with Pebbly Perle.

The background is stitched in Woven Plait using Neon Rays.

The second right heart is stitched in random Diagonal Gobelin and Tent stripes. The key to this pattern is to make every other row Tent Stitches using the same thread (a Dinky Dyes silk in this case). Then vary the width of the Gobelin rows between 1, 2, and 3 stitches. The single row Gobelin just being another Tent Stitch row. These rows alternated threads between Gold Fingering, Pebbly Perle and Dinky Dyes.

The background is stitched in columns of Diagonal Gobelin over two threads using an overdyed floss from Steph Francis in England.