Mosiah 18:21 "And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another."
I went to my trusty free pattern website (knitting pattern central) and they have a whole category just for heart patterns. I found this fabulous little pattern from Berocco. It looked like just what I needed.
Pattern is here
It looked simple enough so I cast on my four stitches and jumped right in. Along the way, I ran into some confusion and it took a lot of experimentation and frustration before I finally figured out what the pattern was saying, so I made this little tutorial with a couple of photos in the confusing bits. I hope this will make your journey easier than mine was.
For yarn, I used Brown Sheep, Lamb's Pride, Cranberry Swirl.
Needles: Size 8.
On the row labeled "1st Hump" you put half the stitches on a holder (above) and cast on three stitches (below). I used the backward loop method.
When you're done with "Dec Row 2" it should look like this:
Now comes the part that really confused me. "Pull up tightly and secure. Sew seam down to cast-on sts." Basically, you snug that trailing thread up and sew the two sides together down to the 3 cast-on stitches you made right at the base of the first hump. Like this:
When you get down to the cast-on edge, it'll look like this:
Next, you "pick up 3 sts in 3 cast-on sts." So - from where your tail is from the seam you just finished, With a new piece of yarn, pick up three stitches, working towards your stitch holder.
Now knit across the stitches on your holder.
Proceed with the instructions for the second hump, and you'll have this:
Sew down to the bottom of the first hump, and continue down to about an inch from the bottom of the heart. I used the mattress stitch. Place your needle down between two vertical lines of knitting and pick up two of the "ladders" from the back side. Then do the same on the opposite side. Snug this up. Keep going back and forth, making sure that you always go between the same two vertical lines on each side, and you end up with a seam that disappears into the pattern of the knitted stitches. It's like magic!
You're now ready to stuff the heart!! The pattern says to use polyester stuffing, but I used my saved stash of wool ends. I keep them in an old sock until I need some fiber fill. Because the wool ends will felt down to a smaller size, you need to stuff the heart extra full!
Yes, I did get it all in there!
Sew down that last little bit.
And you're ready to felt. Don't worry that the humps of the heart are a little pointy. When it felts down, they'll smooth out into nice round heart humps!(Note: I stuffed my red tails in there with the multicolored ones. Then I used my darning needle to thread my last two tails upwards into the point of the heart and out the middle of the heart. I trimmed them off after felting was completed.
