Conversation Hearts Felt Garland Tutorial
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: Crafts, Sewing | Tags: felt, garland, tutorial, Valentine's Day 2 Comments
This is my very first tutorial! I suppose it’s best to start off with something simple and it doesn’t get much easier than a felt garland.
Conversation hearts are such a fun part of Valentine’s Day, so I thought, why not turn them into a felt garland. What a fun and easy way to get into the Valentine’s Day spirit.
Supplies You’ll Need
felt blocks–I used white, light pink, purple, lime green, and bright yellow
heart stencil–I printed out a clip art heart from Microsoft Word
red fabric paint with an easy squeeze top
sewing machine, unless you want to hand stitch the hearts together
First decide how long you want your garland to be. Make sure to include some extra length so that it’s long enough to drape it. (When I made the circle felt garland for Christmas, I almost forgot to do this. A stick straight garland would have looked ridiculous!)
Once you know how long your garland should be (with extra length for draping!), create your stencil. I find that shapes that are about one inch x one inch work best for most felt garlands. This also makes it easy to figure out how many hearts you will need to make your felt garland the right length. To create my stencil, I used a clip art image from Microsoft Word and sized it to approximately one inch x one inch.
Trace your heart stencil onto your felt blocks. If your heart stencil is one inch x one inch, divide the length in inches of your felt garland by 5 (the number of colors) to find the number of hearts to trace onto each felt block.
Then cut out your shapes, keeping them separated by color.
(I used these blue hearts for my example since I forgot to take pics when I made my garland…oops)
Now it’s time to sew! Since I didn’t want to make a color pattern, I grabbed randomly from each of the color piles to until I had a new pile of hearts in random order. The only thing I avoided was putting two of the same color next to each other. To sew, you simply place one heart after another under the presser foot, sewing the length of each heart until you have no more hearts. Remember to backstitch on the first and last heart. And voila, you have a felt heart garland.
To turn your heart garland into a conversation hearts garland, you’ll need to whip out your handy dandy red fabric paint. I always call it puffy paint, although I’m not sure it technically is puffy paint. Anyway…
Lay out your garland on a long, flat surface so that your hearts are all facing in the right direction. Now it’s time to add the fun sayings. I looked up conversation hearts on google image search for ideas. Use your fabric paint to carefully write out your witty sayings. Make sure not to put the tip of your paint directly onto the felt. I found that when I did that, sometimes it would sort of catch on the felt fibers and was kind of a pain, so make sure you apply the paint just above the surface without touching the felt fibers.
Let it dry for a little while. It actually doesn’t take too long. Then, admire your adorable conversation hearts felt garland!
Circle Felt Garland
Posted: December 20, 2011 Filed under: Crafts, Sewing | Tags: Christmas, felt, garland 2 CommentsChristmas is my very favorite holiday! Every year my husband has to tell me to be patient and to wait until Thanksgiving is over before putting up the Christmas tree. I love everything Christmas. I even abandon all forms of music except Christmas music for the entire month of December. This year, though, has been a total change of pace for me. Instead of putting up all the decorations as soon as Thanksgiving dinner is over, or the next day if it’s a year where I’ve somehow mustered enough self control to wait, with a new baby, I’ve been putting things up a little at a time.
Lately I’ve seen so many variations on felt garlands in the blogs I follow, so I decided to give it a go with some extra red and green felt I’ve had lying around for years from a holiday project I completed long ago. It was super easy! All you do is cut out the shapes you want in the colors you want and start sewing, adding one shape after another until you reach the desired length. Luckily, I did a pretty good job eyeballing it and got the right length with my first attempt. I think it definitely dresses up the windows in our living room and adds some extra holiday spirit.
It was so easy, maybe I’ll make garlands for other holidays–hearts for Valentine’s day, shamrocks for St. Patricks day….the possibilities are endless. If I get inspired, I could even use a variety of shapes. A Halloween garland could have pumpkins, ghosts, black cats, etc. I wouldn’t ordinarily do this, but with a little one, holiday decorations are so much more fun!