Padded Fabric Hearts

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  Step 1

  Trace and cut your heart pattern from the cardboard.

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  Step 2

  Cut a piece of batting just bigger than your heart shape and glue it on. Once dry, trim edges.

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  Step 3

  Holding your puffy heart bit on fabric, roughly cut around it leaving about 1cm to 1.5 cm/ 1 inch.

  Flip heart and place puffy-side down on fabric.

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  Step 4

  Pull the fabric at the bottom of your heart-shaped fabric onto the board. Nice and firmly but not too tight, mind, or you’ll distort the pattern. And goodness knows the last thing we need here after weeks of terrible floods and general climactic insanity is a distorted pattern. So go firmly but gently.

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  Step 5

  Glue the fabric on the top arcs of the heart shape.

  I find by doing the bottom point and tops of the arcs first you get anchorage for your fabric and it’s held in the right place while you work on the next bits.

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  Step 6

  Now begin to fold and glue the fabric from the centre of the arcs, down towards the outside arcs of the heart.

  To achieve a nice, rounded arc, you need to kind of pull the fabric out to the side a bit before you glue ie, not straight downwards, to achieve a uniform arc. It’s easier to understand visually.

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  Step 7

  If you pull the fabric at a right angle to the arc...

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  Step 8

  You’ll end up with an angular arc like this.

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  Step 9

  Instead, try to kind of ease it around...

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  Step 10

  You'll get a beautiful rounded arc.

  Then keep easing your fabric around and glueing down towards the tip of the heart on both sides finishing with a nice, pointy tip. You might need to snip some excess fabric off around the tip to get a true point.

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  Step 11

  Cut a small slit at the top of the fabric going down towards the “v” of the heart – where the black arrow is pointing in the next photo. Don’t cut all the way into the “v”. Just enough to allow you to pull and glue the fabric down toward the “v”.

• Step 12

  If you find, at the top “v” that your fabric is pulled apart and a bit of the batting and cardboard is exposed, just use some tweezers to slip in another little bit scrap of fabric between the fabric and padding and glue it down to the back of the cardboard to cover up the exposed bit.

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  Step 13

  You'll end up with this.

  Use Fray Stoppa or some such to deal with any recalcitrant little threads or sticky-up bits.

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  Step 14

  Inspect heart. Sigh with the sheer heartiness of it all.

  Then, cut a piece of felt, just slightly smaller than your heart so it is still big enough to cover your scrappy edges.

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  Step 15

  Depending on what you now want to do with your heart you can either leave it as it is, sew on a brooch back, attach a shoe clip or hair clip. I did all of those.

  For the brooch you saw at the beginning of the post, I simply sewed on a brooch back then glued the felt heart to my puffy heart.

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  Step 16

  This necklace is just two hearts sandwiched together, inserting a little wire hook between them before glueing. I just bent a jewellery head pin into a loop for mine. You could even use a paper clip.

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  Step 17

  What else could you use them for? Well, as I said above, anything really. Stick one to a card, line some up on your mantlepiece or windowsill, glue one to the front of a fabric journal cover, hang sandwiched ones from fishing wire from the roof at different heights in a cluster (cute for a Valentine’s or love heart themed party). Yep, millions of things to do with ‘em. I’m going to see if I can successfully mount one on a ring base. Now that would a be a conversation piece of jewellery.

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  Step 18

  But what about you over there scowling in the corner. Yes I’m talking to you, you Valentine-hating anarchist. I see you dry retching and I know you simply loathe anything lovey dovey. Fair enough. Each to their own. I respect your decision and I have not forgotten you. Here’s your project my lovelorn friend: the anti-Valentine.

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