Endless Hearts

This project is lovely, but can be a real challenge. I'm taking notes in case I want to do this project again.

In order to make the joins at the base of the 3-ring clovers as neat as possible, I made the 3rd ring of a clover with a very long picot. The first join to this picot is a Skylark Join. The second join is a Lark's Head Picot Join. Finally, the first ring of the next clover is joined to the first picot using a down (or up) join. Since half the joins are from the front and half from the back, this means that I had to make Skylark Joins from the front and back and Lark's Head Picot Joins from the front and back. This can be quite challenging.

I also wanted to avoid the intruding picot, so I tatted the 2nd clover in the pattern and the SCMR corner flowers separately with long picots and set them aside until I was ready to join to them. I joined the last clover's ring before the corner to the SCMR flower and later tatted the chains over the long picot using Skylark and Lark's Head Picot Joins. It got cramped, and I needed to make sure the shuttles stayed on the correct sides of the work, since I needed the core thread on the front side and the ball thread on the back for the Lark's head join that would follow. This too was challenging.

The twist - In order to make the twist look mirrored, I did it differently on the back side compared to the front. After the vsp there is a double stitch. On the front it is fhs, shs. So I made a another shs, RW, and then a fhs. This completed the twist. If I was on the back, the double stitch after the vsp is shs, fhs,. So I made another fhs, RW, and then a shs. I think next time, I might add one more repeated half stitch to make that section a little longer.

I would also make the arches around the hearts a little longer. I tat tightly and adding more stitches would give that some more room.

It really is a lovely pattern.