Kate and I are hosting a special Valentine’s Day party for our playgroup. I have a bit of a tendency to go overboard with the planning of these things, but I sometimes lack follow through. 🙂 This time I actually managed to finish one of my planned projects! It’s a felt heart banner based on this tutorial from, where else, Pinterest.
Of course I had to change it up a bit. 🙂 I started off by cutting some felt into strips 1 inch wide and 4 inches long.
Such pretty little felt. 🙂
I didn’t end up having enough red, so I decided to make red squares in between the hearts instead of red hearts.
I sewed pairs of red squares together to give them a bit more definition. Then I started on the hearts. First stitch 2 strips together. Then open them up and stitch the bottoms. Voila! Hearts.
The tutorial has you sew all of the hearts before cutting them down to 1 inch wide. In retrospect, that might have been easier. 🙂
I spent forever stitching the hearts together in a chain. I tied the thread off at one edge of the first heart, ran it through the red square and then tied it off at the edge of the second heart. I was pretty proud of myself for doing it this way because it kept there from being a thread through the center of the heart. Of course I was only proud of myself until I tried to hang it.
Then I noticed that the weight of the hearts was causing them to flatten and look idiotic. ::sigh:: I took it back down and strung the hearts like beads. Much quicker and with the added advantage of not pulling the hearts flat.
You can hardly tell that the thread is there anyway. I should have done it this way from the beginning! The hearts are kind of wonky and turned in different directions, but I like it that way. It seems more playful and less Martha Stewart. Perfect for a playgroup.
I had some extra hearts so I added them hanging down from the banner. All in all, I think it turned out super cute!