Sweetheart Fancy Finishes

Valentine's Day means it is time to start the Wrapped in Love and Luck challenge! This wrapping challenge is daily between now and St. Patrick's Day, it features a ton of only back carries, and we thought it'd be fun to kick off the second year of the challenge like last year with a Valentine’s and sweetheart-themed carry, the Sweetheart finish!

The Sweetheart finish is cool because you can choose to use it with a few different carries depending on the features you want and what passes make you comfortable. We have a fun chart here to tell us more about the differences and similarities between these carries.:

Back Wrap Cross Carry (BWCC) is one that we posted yesterday on Instagram, the video below starts with us in a Reinforced Ruck (RR), and a DH (Double Hammock) is used in our title image for this article, above. DH has an asterisk in the chart because this could also be any carry with a spread chest pass like Charlie's Cross Carry, Wendy’s DH, etc.

If you go with Back Wrap Cross Carry, know that it will have two passes across the chest and it is not possible to show both sides of the wrap in the chest pass. This is because we start in a Torso pass, with both ends of the wrap coming under arm. From the Torso pass we go straight into the chest passes, so there's no opportunity to flip the wrap. Starting in a Torso pass will also make this carry lower on your back. Back Wrap Cross Carry does allow for some fun finish options like rings because it ends with two tails hanging over shoulder. I used two rings in that Instagram photo from yesterday that I mentioned before.

Reinforced Ruck, though, will be a higher carry because it starts in a Ruck pass with both tails over shoulder. There's still two passes on the chest but they are done closer to the end. Also if you do at least one pass under leg, you have the option to twist the wrap a half turn and show the contrasting side. In a RR the ruck strap comes from over shoulder, then it goes right down to under baby's knee where I could twist the wrap slightly and show the contrasting side. Both the twist and the under-the-leg passes (they're Wiggleproof reinforcing passes in this case) are optional - there are two tutorials in the babywearing challenge group showing the differences.

Finally in our chart we have Double Hammock, or really any carry that has a spread chest pass. With this one we only have one pass over chest, and it is just twisted at the center of the chest to make that Sweetheart pinch in the middle. You'll always show contrasting wrap sides with this one. In my opinion, this is the easiest way to do the Sweetheart -- as long as you are asked ready proficient at the carry done the usual way, of course.

Now that we know our options you can pick the carry that is right for you!

• Back Wrap Cross Carry will naturally be lower, has two chest passes and no contrast in the chest pass. 
  
• Reinforced Ruck will be a higher back carry, still with two chest passes but has options for showing contrast.
  
• Carries with a single chest pass that can be flipped will always show contrasting sides of a wrap.

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So... I thought I'd totally break with all these and try all do experiment in today's live tutorial. I got it in me to try a Rainbow's Back Carry, but I want to make the waist belt spread like a chest pass and twist it, then finish like a classic base size double sling carry. I don' talk through it in the video since it's an experiment I'm kind of working it out in my mind answer I go, but I show you what I'm doing starting at 9:00 in the video below...

What do we think? I'm not sure it's technically still a Rainbow's Back Carry because I eliminated the cross passes to do the chest pass... so maybe it's more of an Inside Out DH? But whatever - it's my carry I can do what I want! The classic Rainbow's, and I suppose any variations you'd like, is coming up in the Wrapped in Love and Luck challenge in March so you won't miss it if you tried something else for day one.

Next week in our live tutorial we will dial it back a bit and talk about fancy finishes for beginners! There's an lot of intermediate and advanced stuff in this challenge but there's beginner stuff too - something for everyone! We'll talk more about it next Tuesday. Happy wrapping all!