Crafting Love: Fabric Menagerie
for Valentine’s Day Gifts for our Grandchildren
I follow a Facebook group called “I Found a Quilted Heart.”
The idea is to create quilted fabric hearts and leave them in public places for strangers to find, hopefully brightening their day.
I’ve followed this group for several months, thinking what a great idea
And I thought, couldn’t I do something like that even though I am not much of a seamstress?
But I never followed through until recently when I decided that I would start by making a fabric heart for our 7-year-old Granddaughter Madysen for Valentine’s Day.
To start, I brought out my sewing machine, which I only use once a year or so.
That means I have to relearn how to wind the bobbin and thread the machine each time, usually with the instruction manual at my side!
I have a couple of small totes with fabric remnants and fat quarters in my stash. Some of the fabric is the retired fabric that Stampin’ Up! used to carry. Do you remember that?
And I have tons of buttons, ribbons, and other embellishments.
I used my retired Hearts die and Stampin’ Cut & Emboss Machine to cut the fabric.
Yes, the metal dies will cut through lightweight cotton fabrics!
Then, it was just a matter of sewing the front and back together, leaving an opening for the poly-fill stuffing.
I sewed the opening by hand once the stuffing was added. Then, I added buttons, and ribbon from my stash using a glue gun to secure.
After completing the heart, I knew I needed to create something for our 4-year-old Grandson, Ryan.
I found this dinosaur pattern on Pinterest, creating quickly this cute guy for him.
The dinosaur took a little bit longer to create as it has a few more pieces, but all in all, it was pretty easy.
The “scales” on the back were also cut using my die-cut machine and heart dies.
These projects were fun, and I hope our grandkids will enjoy them.
And they were a good place for me to start getting back into doing a little bit of sewing.
Now, I’m off to create quilted hearts to leave for people to find!
If you happen to find a quilted heart, be sure to take a photo and add to the I Found a Quilted Heart website or Facebook page!
