Valentine's Day (a little late!)

Here is the valentine card that I made this year.  I made one for MisterStitches, and one that I mailed to MomStitches.  It was a lot of fun, and really pretty easy to make.

I used a Carol Doak paper-pieced pattern,  found for free at her website.  And she also sells blank cards on her site with a cut-out square that fits her small patterns exactly. 

The window is 3" x 3".

This small bit of paper piecing was very, very easy, so don't let it frighten you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm going to show you the valentine I made for MisterStitches for Valentine's Day. I wanted to show you sooner, right after I made it. But MisterStitches reads my blog, and I didn't want to spoil the surprise.

I started off by crazy piecing red and pink and cream-colored fabrics onto a muslin base. I sewed in a few pieces of lace, too. In the photo above I'm finished with this step. If you look very closely you might be able to see my drawn line around the heart shape. I sewed a line of stitching just outside the drawn line, just to hold it all together nicely. Then I removed the pins and proceeded to do my decorative stitching.

I used the stitches on my machine, rather than doing this by hand, which greatly speeded up the process. Above is a close-up. Isn't that heart stitch great!?! And I love the little "swag" stitch, too. It's so dainty and delicate.

Here I am all finished with my decorative stitches, and I have trimmed the heart to its final shape. Now I have to finish the edges.

I did a nice, tight zig zag all around the edges to bind them. I went slow and easy, and used a stiletto to hold the edges together as I sewed them.

An alternative would have been to bind them with fabric, but this zig zag method was nice and clean.

Here are both hearts! Yes, I made two: one for MisterStitches, and one for

MomStitches and DadStitches.

I then sewed each fabric heart to the front of a blank card. Just three little threads, and tiny stitches that don't show on the front.