Tutorial Tuesday

This week I'll show you how to make a heart-shape out of 2 Ships.  (Again, click on the highlighted "ships" to go to the original lesson if you need a refresher.)  Here's the finished Heart:

Begin by stitching a left-vertical ship.  This time we're covering threads horizontally - begin with covering 2 threads.  Your longest stitch will cover 6 threads, then begin your decrease.  Remember to keep your right side (center) parallel as you're increasing, and your left side (outer) parallel as you're decreasing.

Make that long arm with 5 parallel over-2 stitches.  After the 5th stitch, bring your needle up 2 threads to the right and 2 threads above the previous stitch (leaving that blank).

Fill in your blank with a 4-thread stitch, then do your final 2-thread stitches in the curve.  Now you have a choice.  You can run your needle behind the threads as we've done before, and stitch the other side the reverse of what we've done.  Your other option - stitch from the top down.  To do this, bring your needle up 2 fabric threads to the right, but still parallel to your final stitch from the first ship.  You will then bring your needle down another 2 fabric threads to the right to make your "final" over-2 (except you're doing it first this time.)

Then you'll bring your needle up in the same hole as the edge over-2 from the previous ship.  Cover 2 threads to the right (away from the previous ship).

Now we skip our over-4 and work our top over-2 by coming up 2 fabric threads directly above where we brought the needle down.  On this ship we're stitching from left to right instead of right to left, so this will feel a little awkward at first.

Then work the over-4 we skipped, and stitch your 5 parallel stitches for your long arm

Begin increasing your diamond shape to the left (keep your right - outer - side parallel).  Your 5th stitch will cover 6 fabric threads.  Then begin your decrease on the right - your left (center) will be parallel, and will share holes with the first ship.  (Sorry, I didn't take pictures of all of this because it's the exact reverse of what we did before.)  Again, here's the finished Heart shape:

And the Heart Cross I promised you - you can see that by working up one side and down the other you'll position yourself to easily work the other sides of this motif, without wasting thread.  It also is conveniently 4 Tulips put together, so it would work well in a design that also incorporates Tulips.

And, finally, a look at the Tutorial Sampler so far.  I'm really enjoying putting these shapes together.  Believe it or not, this Hardanger piece was something I started in January of 2007 - I didn't know what to do with the big empty space after I did the Kloster framework!