Chain of Hearts

When I made the crazy patch for my heart sampler, I tried to use as many heart-related stitches as I could, including an experiment with chain stitch:

I liked the way it came out, so I decided to do it again in a more rigorous manner, complete with step-by-step instructions.

Make a row of very loose chain stitch, going from the bottom up:

Once you get to the top, go back down working tacking stitches to shape the hearts -- one on each side, a little above the insertion points in the fabric:

With all but the top heart, the two tacking stitches cause the top of the loop to stretch flat across.  Add a third tacking stitch in the middle, coming up at the insertion point and back down one thread above (or in the same hole, if you wish):

Continue all the way down to make a chain of hearts!

(You can see how I got better as I practiced -- those bottom hearts are a little blobby.)

While searching Pintangle's Take a Stitch Tuesday archives for another project, I came across a chain stitch variant called shell chain stitch.  That pretty stitch plus the hearts inspired me to start a chain stitch sampler: