Fabric Heart Cards

Before kids, my hobby was card-making.
Since having kids, I've fallen in love with sewing and fabric!
For this project, I dug through all my card-making supplies and my scrap fabric, and merged the two together!


Here are the Valentines that we made for all Titus and Norah's little friends, both near and far!

 

Fabric Heart Valentine's Cards

 

What you'll need:
Paper cutter
scissors
scrap fabric
card stock paper
sewing machine
glue stick
extra paper for a note
stamps/ink (any card making supplies)

First, find some scrap paper in pinks, reds, purples, etc. and cut them to the size you'd like.
Mine are various sizes because we just cut wherever we felt like it!
Titus enjoyed using my paper cutter, although he did manage to come away from it with a battle wound from it! :(

Then using scrap fabric in various patterns and Valentines colors, cut out hearts!
Polka dots are fun- which you can see I have a lot of! :)
I find the quickest way to do this is to start with a small square of fabric, fold it in half, and cut a half heart starting at the fold.
Or if you want to be precise or aren't confident in your cutting skills, you could draw a template. Just lay the template on the fabric, trace it and cut it out that way. But that will take a lot longer. I don't think an imperfect heart is that big of a deal, anyways. It just adds to the charm of this handmade card!

Now it's time to sew!
Place a heart on one of the pieces of paper anyway you like, and place the machine needle in the bottom tip of the heart. This is your starting point.
I just used white thread for my cards to keep it simple. In some of fabric it matched nicely and wasn't that noticeable. And in others it stood out more. Feel free to be bold in your thread color!
You also might need to adjust the tension/settings on your machine since you're sewing through paper.  I loosened the tension slightly and increased my stitch length because I noticed some of my stitching with looking tight. It would be a good idea to play around with the settings on a practice card.
Start at the bottom tip of the heart and work your way up the first side and around the first hump. When you reach the middle point, keep your needle in the fabric/paper, lift the presser foot, and swivel the whole thing so you can do the next side.
Be careful when stitching around the curves, but also keep it moving! And be sure to keep a good hold on the heart since it's not pinned! Don't worry if it's not perfect- mine certainly aren't!
Be sure to back stitch at the beginning and end, and clip the threads close the fabric.
Now repeat with how ever many cards you plan to make!

Here's what they'll look like when they're finished!
Beautiful! Just a few more steps to go!

Now when you're done sewing, the back will look like this. You'll see the stitching.
To cover it, we glued a Valentine's poem to the back.

  Then Titus signed the cards, and we stamped some hearts.

For the front, we stamped each of the their friends' names, or stamped the word "Love."
You can decorate your cards any way you'd like by rounding the corners, using decorative scissors, stickers, rub-ons, etc. 

Now they're done and we have a stack of envelopes ready to mail to lots of loved very-missed friends and cousins in MI!


  
For another Valentine's craft idea, click over to make a Valentines Garland!
 

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