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Alphabet Heart


Alphabet Heart, my latest design evolved from my Red Flowers design.  As usual, my mind wandered as I stitched the Red Flowers.  I imagined it stitched with overdyed floss instead of plain old DMC floss.  I also realized I was not restricted to a square or rectangle.  The colors reminded me of Valentines Day and I remembered a heart shaped Altoids tin tucked away in a drawer.

Sidetracked, I abandoned my stitching and rooted around for the tin and traced it onto graph paper.  I transferred the flower design into the heart outline.  The next challenge was colors.  I knew I had the perfect overdye.  I found it right away but was dismayed to find there was no tag on it. 


I went to the local needlework store to play detective.  It is definitely silk, not cotton.  But, nothing at the store was the same colors - I must have gotten it in a kit.  I passed on an Internet search.  There are so many flosses out there and identifying it based on a picture seemed unlikely even if I stumbled across the correct website.

My design has to be reproducible so I put the floss aside and found another thread that included a tag.  I definitely like the way it turned out, however, it would have been great in the other colors too.  Maybe I'll make another one in the future.  Luckily, the red and greens where easy to choose - I have plenty on hand, all with the tags for easy identification.

  When I finished stitching the design I discovered it was too big to fit on the Altoid tin.  In my rush, I had made a math error.  Instead of starting over, I decided to go with the design as is.  I was stitching on a big piece of linen with plenty of room.  So, I added a traditional sampler alphabet (which also made it fit into a standard frame) and am pleased with the result.

It was a rather roundabout journey, with the design/plan changing on me every few days.  That's the way it goes sometimes.  Perhaps if I had started a day earlier or day later, the final design would have been very different (it might have fit on that darn tin).  Sometimes it is hard to stop at one design, you want to play with all the different variations.

This design is available on http://www.patternsonline.com/.

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