Well the heart design is finished.  The finished size is 4X4 to fit in a standard 8X8 frame.  Here is entire design and then a closeup of each side.

 

 

This how the finished design will look with the mat and a simple black frame.  I think my friend will be surprised to find this in her mailbox.



 

So a little more work has been done.  I decided to use a Peach cotton floss for the center section.  I am not a fan of laying floss or stranded silk but I do it because it looks so much better. Not sure how I feel about the color but what's done is done.  I next started a stripe on the left using Rainbow Gallery Splendor, also requires laying the silk.  Not sure if I will replicate the stripe on the right or do something else.  Ultimately there will be another stripe on either side with one canvas thread peeking through.  Since this is design as you go I have no idea what I'll show next time.

I have a friend that I meet about 41 or 42 years ago and she has been admiring my needle work. I said you never know when something might appear in the mailbox so I need to create something for her.

I thought about a heart as I have Victorian Red 18 count canvas and several different threads from my stash to quickly stitch up a design.  As you see I have an 8" square of Victorian Red stretched and selected several threads to work with.

 

I've worked on the design for about 3 hours or so and you can see if has none of the original threads I selected.  I started with Watercolours #248 for the hearts and am using WaterLillies #190 to fill in next to the hearts.  I was going to only have 1 heart but the design I worked out was too large for the frame I have so on to Plan B, multiple smaller hearts.

Ok so what now, I have no idea.  I'm designing this as I go and you will see the mess on my stitching table, not sure which other threads I will use but looks like the red design is now pinks, peach and lavender.  Not sure how that happened but I'll just go with it and see what the finished design looks like.