These cute heart shaped ornaments make wonderful gifts or gift wrap accents. Follow this tutorial for easy Christmas crafts or unique Valentine crafts that use recycled wool sweaters.
See this project and more ornament sewing tutorials in 6 Sew Easy to Make Christmas Ornaments, a free eBook to download!
Materials:
- Felted wool sweater or wool felt
- Embroidery thread and needle
- Cotton or wool thread
- Assorted beads and buttons
- Stuffing
- Scissors, pins and tracing paper
Instructions:
- Cut out hearts. To make a heart shaped paper pattern, fold a piece of paper and starting at the fold, cut out one side of the heart so that the fold is the center of the heart. This way when you open the paper you have a perfectly proportioned heart. Try several shapes and sizes until you have the desired heart shape. Then pin the paper to the wool and cut out two hearts for each ornament you want to make. I also cut out some smaller hearts to make contrasting centers for some of my ornaments.
- Embroider and embellish the hearts. I used a contrasting color embroidery thread to sew simple stitches in star and swirl patterns on some of my hearts. Then I stitched on seed beads as embellishments. On other hearts I used a blanket stitch, or buttonhole stitch, to appliqué smaller hearts to the center, then added a button for embellishment. You will be using two pieces of wool for each heart ornament. You can decorate one or both sides of the ornament.
- Sew the hearts together. With wrong sides together, use a blanket stitch to sew around the outside edge of each heart. When about a one inch opening remains, fill the heart with stuffing, then finish stitching to close the opening.
- Hang the heart. Thread a short length of wool or cotton thread through the top edge of each heart to hang on your tree or tie to a package.
