For some strange reason, the minute you turn the page of the calendar to February, you see hearts. I was reminded of a piece I did several years ago for a Valentine exchange in which I participated for a needlepoint discussion list.
It's a simple pattern: hearts conjoined in rows. Admittedly, I had to purchase the cream Sheep's Silk for the background, since I wasn't sure if I had enough of a neutral thread to carry through the piece. The rest, however, was bits and scraps of other threads--Sheep's Silk, Silk & Ivory, and Kreinik metallic--in pastels of pink, green, lavendar, blue and three overdyes.
How to decide what heart gets what color or what particular thread if it's overdyed? I often use the Knight's move in chess to determine location. Decide on one thread for a section, then for your next section, move two spaces over and one space down--or one space over and two spaces down. It will invariably give you a great random pattern for both color and texture.
For the inside of the hearts, I chose stitches that appealed to me and also fit well within the given area. As I recall, I used Nobuko, diagonal Scotch, Milanese, diagonal cashmere, framed Scotch, framed diagonal Scotch, and Jacquard stitches. But there are tons of other stitches you could use just as easily. I basically used the Knight's move in placing the stitch patterns as well as the colors. The background was done in basketweave.
If you're not into Valentines, consider using a square, diamond, circle or even oval in this way to
create a pattern and then use up your stash filling it in. For smaller design areas, it could be used for a box lid insert; for larger areas, a pillow like mine.
