Heart shaped stitches are filling my social feeds quite a bit these days. And I would have sworn I didn’t have any in my stash. Well, today’s stitch proves I would have been delightfully wrong.

Like a lot of us these days, I’m using my extra time at home re-organizing. I was surprised and thrilled to stumble across this adorable ornament in the back of a drawer in a chest I use for my thread stash. The stitched sample uses nothing more than DMC Perle Cotton on 18-mesh. (Bonus links: the stitch for the dress can be found here and the stitch for the wings is here.)

It’s an easy and scalable stitch. Create the heart in vertical straight stitches from top to bottom so they have crisp, wrapped top edges. When you get to the far side of the heart, bring your needle across the back to one hole below the center thread in the heart and add a single, long running stitch to the top of the next heart, and repeat. In the stitched sample, the running stitch is 16 rows high. If you want more hearts in your background, make shorter running stitches. But take the time to count it out so the hearts is subsequent vertical columns are centered against the running stitch on its side. Or not, it’s up to you.

This stitch is a great template for any kind of theme oriented background. Select your thematic element and you are off to the races. I’ve seen these columns with small pumpkins instead of hearts. You could do a bat instead of a heart for a Halloween piece. I’ve used single tiny snowflakes for the repeated element and I’ve seen dramatic single snowflakes as the element (on pinterest.com). The possibilities are virtually endless.

This stitch diagram, along with all other #whimsicalwednesday and #smallspacesunday stitch diagrams, can also be found on a Pinterest board here.

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If you like what you see on this blog, want to learn some very creative decorative stitches, and how to put them all together, whimsicalstitch.com has a book for you! Mary’s Whimsical Stitches is a contemporary how-to collection of more than 250 stitches for stitchers regardless of skill level. The book includes updated and sequenced diagrams from this blog, all-new stitches, and a chapter on the basics of needlepoint. For more information, visit here.

whimsicalstitch.com also sells Stitch Guides and Stitch Concepts for Melissa Shirley Designs, Zecca Designs, Sandra Gilmore, Purple Palm, Maggie, and Penny MacLeod, and many more. Click here to see the newest guides and click here to see the entire collection.

I hope you have the perfect spot for this stitch! Please enjoy! Have a wonderful #whimsicalwednesday!

A Note about Diagrams
I use color in diagrams to make them as clear as possible.  The primary function of different colored lines is to illustrate a stitch sequence.  For example, layering of colors demonstrates you add them in that order.  They can also provide ideas on how to integrate additional threads (one line for each color).  Or, you can use the same thread for all color lines.  That's where I encourage you to use your imagination for the space you are stitching!