Valentine's Day

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!

Yesterday I whipped up the "love" hearts in this picture so I would have something appropriate to post today, and to add a few more hearts to my 365 sewn hearts total.  As I was making them, I realized I had a sewing tip I would like to share with you.

I used red thread to sew the felt letters onto the fabric hearts on the sewing machine (I wanted to hand-embroider around the edges but I ran out of time).  Normally when you sew on the machine, you backstitch at the beginning and end of your line of stitching to secure the thread.  I didn't want backstitches to detract from my red outline, so here's what I did:

I stitched all around the letter without backstitching, and I left a long tail of thread at both the beginning and the end.

Flipping the heart over, I pulled the loose threads from the front through to the back (with the help of a pin).

Then I just tied them in a knot to secure the threads.

There--a nice neat outline!

I happened to have some  red polymer clay beads that I made a while ago and never used--they were perfect to put between my hearts!  Then I used a long doll-making needle to string everything onto a length of embroidery floss.  This is the hutch in my dining room; I think the little "love" garland fits in very well.  (The strange glow in the lower right is the reflection of my computer screen from the other side of the room!)

Have a happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Box of Hearts

Here are the hearts I promised to show you, from my personal swap with Jo S. on Craftster.  If you haven't checked out Craftster yet, please do!  If you create a Craftster account, come back here and leave a comment including your Craftster user name, and I will send you a handmade gift!  No strings attached--no kidding!! (I will send you a private message on Craftster to get your mailing address; so when you see a message from Leslieshappyheart, you will know it's me!)

Our swap was to fill a small flat rate box with hearts.  This is how the box looked before I closed it up.  Jo's favorite colors are turquoisy-blue, limey-green, and red, so I made a lot of the hearts in those colors.

This is the one that was in-progress in the previous post.  I love how crazy-cute it is!

These two embroidered hearts are based on items Jo has in her Pinterest.  (If you don't have a Pinterest account, you really should give it a try--it is a great place to pull together pictures of everything you like in the world.  Wouldn't your husband--boyfriend--mother--sister--want to see pictures of what you are wishing for when gift-giving occasions roll around?)  Both hearts are cotton embroidery thread on linen.  The bird heart has a green silk back, and the flower heart has a red silk back.  The filling is polyester fiberfil.

These three hearts are all made of wool felt.  The green one is beaded the same on the front and the back; the back of the blue one has small blue beads; and the red one has a combination of embroidered stars and sewn beads on both front and back.  I love all of these, but the flower is my favorite!

The two larger hearts in this picture are obviously made of the same fabric.  The colors are so perfect for Jo that I had to use it twice!  The smaller heart is wool felt with sewn beads and a button on the front only.

These three are the "weird" ones in the bunch!  I talked about the perler bead hearts in a previous post.  The blue heart didn't come out as great as I had hoped; Jo has several Virgin Mary related things in her Pinterest, so I sewed a Miraculous Medal onto the blue heart and covered it with white netting, hoping for an etherial feeling...hmmm, it isn't quite there somehow...

These three are more my colors and style--I like these bright colors, the pink especially!



I believe I just mentioned that I like pink...need I say more?

These are my favorite three. (The button heart gets another picture!)  The big "S" heart was inspired by several things on Jo's Pinterest that had her initial on them.  The S is made of wool felt, machine sewn onto the fabric.  The small heart with the BIG flower is perhaps my favorite of all of them.  It is all wool felt, and it is small enought that it could be worn as a brooch.  (Good idea, I may have to make some more...)

That's the end of my show-and-tell about the box of hearts.  I made twenty hearts.  When I proposed the swap to Jo, I couldn't think of more that a few right off the top of my head, but as I continued to think about it and work on the hearts, more ideas occured to me, until I filled the whole box.  I have found that this is how it usually is with swaps:  I start with a small idea that grows and develops as I spend time and effort working on it, and the end result is almost always bigger and better than I could have imagined at the beginning.  That's why swapping is such a great activity--it makes you grow as a crafter.

Next week I will prove this to you by showing you the "Mystery Critter" I just mailed to another swapper today.  I never thought I would make what I made!!