After a couple of aborted attempts, it was back to the google machine to try and find inspiration. I noticed most of the images I liked were taking me to pinterest, so I dusted off my elderly, never-used account, created a textile arts pinterest board and got lost for a couple of hours.

I responded really well to works made up of many, many tiny repetitive stitches – and I absolutely adored the works of people like Rieko Koga and Christine Mauersberger – so many really beautiful pieces.

You will recall the parameters of my challenge: something with pointy hearts | something for Don.

And after knocking around a bunch of ideas, I asked myself the following:

Would it be totally bonkers to:
+ sew one stitch for each day of our relationship since our first date? YES!
+ or maybe a tiny heart shape for each day of our relationship? YES!
+ and make each year a slightly different colour? YES!
+ and a red heart to mark each anniversary? YES!
+ and a gold heart for our wedding? YES!

Yes – totally Bonkers, but Awesome!

So that’s the project – a tiny heart for each day of our relationship, meandering in a line ending in a red heart for each year.

Pillaged the thread stash for shades of grey and navy

Created a spreadsheet (of course)

Made some checklists (also of course)

And began:

first anniversary

3 years

gold heart for wedding

I’m quite pleased with how it is turning out. Though with only 740 hearts in (of 4,063 @ today) – there’s quite a long way to go! And I imagine it will be quite dense with hearts by the time it is done.

I’m really enjoying the meditative aspect of it – it’s lovely just to sit quietly with an audiobook and stitch away. I’m not intending to rush to completion in the next *gasp* 23 days – it will finish when it finishes.