Valentine's heart garland tutorial

I am so excited to share this tutorial with you all!!! Crafting is one of my very favorite things and cheap and easy crafts that make awesome things are the best. I’m really into felt right now; we made felt turkeys for Thanksgiving, felt snowmen for Christmas/winter, and might as well keep the trend going for Valentine’s Day. I like felt because it’s really cheap $0.33 each at any of my local craft stores (less if you have a coupon, I always have a few). Felt is easy to maneuver, cut, twist, sew, the most difficult thing that I have run into is gluing it but then I just bought some felt glue, problem solved.

I saw this projec on Pintrest last year, you can find the original post I saw here. I knew that I could make this I just needed the time and supplies. An excuse to go shopping? Uh yes please.

 I picked 5 diffrent colors of felt 2 of each color. At $.33 each thats only $3.33. I started by cutting them in half so that I had two equal pieces. Once you've cut them place the equal pieces on top of each other.

 

Pick one of the edges and sew a straight stitch the length of the felt, back stitching at each end. Use a 1/2" seam allowance. After you have sewn one side turn it over do that the seam is faced down and roll the sides out making a heart shape. Meet each of the two edges (you can pin them if it helps you) then sew another straight stitch the length of the felt again back stitching at each end and using a 1/2" seam allowance. You should complete this process for each of your pieces of felt. Now you should have ten super cute, heart shaped felt tubes.

Next I used my soft tape measure to help me measure where to cut. I made little snips at 1" intervals along each of my 10 heart tubes. I then went back and cut each of those snips all the way through the width of the hear tubes for the end result to be a 1" felt heart.

 I really yielded more than I thought I was going to, actually enough to complete other projects after the initial garland. I just love this pile of hearts!


  






I took this as a opportunity for a home school moment on patterns with Ronnie and he made this pattern. I can only imagine all of the other things we could do with these pieces, but I cant get off track! I have a project to finish. Using Ronnie's pattern as the base for our garland I flattened the hearts out and with my needle and bakers twine threaded the needle through the middle of the stack. My piece of twin was about 5 feet long, you should cut yours to fit for where you want to hang it. My piece used about half of my felt hearts leaving me with plenty for more projects. After they were all threaded on the twine I started arranging them so that they weren't squished. You can choose to have them all point down or alternate down and up either way they spin pretty easy before or after you un-squish them.
I am loving them at this point. I reinforced our pattern with Ronnie at this point and he was excited to see the result of something he had chosen.

I love being able to do crafts with the kids. It not only teaches them to make something out of raw materials but it then shows them how to problem solve and opens so many other creative skills, pattern making, hand sewing, machine sewing, manipulation, the possibilities are endless.
This is our finished garland! our hearts liked to fall over so they took some arranging once I actually go the garland hung on the wall but now I am in love!









I had a ton of left over hearts so I whipped up this little piece but threading through the top and bottom of the hearts instead of the middle. Super cute accessory! You could thread your garland this way as well. Whichever look you like the best! I really love how many options there are with this project. Most of all I love that the coast of this project was under $5 and it took me about two hours to complete, even with a little helper. I am confident that this project will also pack away well to be used again for many Valentine's days to come. I hope you enjoy making this as much as we did.