This kit came from one of those British cross-stitching magazines, I forget which. The instructions had one cross stitching on the gingham (duh), but I thought I'd try some chicken scratch stitching, which I learned about from Alicia Paulson's
Embroidery Companion (a great book, by the way).
Only, I didn't take into account how tiny this gingham is -- at least sixteen squares per inch, when most chicken scratch is done on 1/4 inch or 1/8 inch gingham. I used just one strand of floss and spent a lot of time with the hoop just a few inches from my face. Three of Paulson's diamond motifs created too tiny a heart, so I expanded the design using this
heart pattern (that site also has some info about this style of embroidery).
The effect of the loop stitches is pretty neat; there's a reason why this stitch is also called Depression Lace or Amish Lace. I recommend a Flickr search to see all sorts of nifty patterns.
For the second heart I took the easy way out and just sewed on some pink seed beads:
The resulting texture is great, and fun to play with.
The hearts, all sewn up:
The chicken-scratch one came out kind of lumpy and misshapen, because the not-high-quality fabric slid around while I was sewing it. For the beaded heart I basted the fabric to the felt backing first, and that worked much better. In both cases, I forgot to sew in the ribbon hangers, so I had to tack those on later.
