Oh, My Hearts! My Embroidered Hearts!

Greetings from a snowy Kansas! I’m back after a week of company and a big family wedding. All the guests departed Monday, in perfect time for a snowstorm today.

And there I was, thinking winter was over. Ha.

Last week, I found myself dabbling with some mini-mini projects. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Since I required flexibility during the week with all the company and such, I decided just to go with my idea and spontaneously play with some stitching. Sometimes, unplanned is the way to go!

There’s nothing quite so satisfying as embroidering a bunch of little things. These little things all started with a pile of felted wool hearts in pink and red. They are the perfect size to Do Something with, although I didn’t have any real idea what.

You could string them together horizontally into a little decorative “bunting” thing. You could string them vertically.

You could use them for small pincushions (I had that in mind), small decorative bits, or little gifts of a Valentine’s sort.

If you were really adventurous, you could perhaps sew them on your clothes – kind of like these puffy crocheted hearts all over my niece’s sweater…

…if you really wanted to.

I really didn’t have a set plan for my pile of little felted hearts. I just knew I wanted to do Something with them, and that this Something involved embroidery.

I love the way they turned out!! They were fun to make, they’re cute, and pretty, and such a perfect little size!

Heck, I think they’re a whole lot cuter (and a lot less obnoxious) than the ubiquitous conversation hearts you see everywhere this time of year.

Not that I have anything against conversation hearts, mind you!

After all, who doesn’t like sweet, rock-hard, enigmatically flavored chalk, decorated with mysterious letters that could mean anything?

What does this mean? Liked You More Yesterday?

Even though the felted hearts are pretty small, they’re a perfectly scrumptious blank slate.

I attacked them with no real plan at all. I grabbed my thread drawers of Heathway wool (such lovely colors!!), a pincushion full of different sized needles, and a pair of scissors. I sat down at my work table with a pile of hearts and some miscellany around me and just did whatever came to mind, as it occurred to me.

From simple to complex – running stitch to bullion knots – I had fun with each little heart.

While I was pleased with the outcome on the various floral hearts, I think my favorite hearts are the simple ones with running stitches and little bows. They were so quick to work up, and they’re just kinda cute!

While I was playing around, I thought in terms of “Victorian” type Valentines, too, at one point. I thought that maybe some white scallops around the edge of a heart would be pretty.

So I played with that idea for a bit.

I used regular floss to work this scalloped edge, using scalloped buttonholed chain stitch. My idea was to produce something a little more lace-like or eyelet-like.

I knew right away I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like the contrast between the mercerized cotton (regular cotton floss) and the wool. I vastly preferred the wool embroidery on the wool hearts.

And then there was something not quite right about the structure of the scalloped buttonholed chain stitch…

…something kind of creepy and toothsome.

Plus, looking at the heart head-on, it looked more like a heart with an old-fashioned toothache.

Sad, in fact.

My sister Sarah who was visiting from Pennsylvania wanted to attempt a conversation heart, but there’s not a lot of room to stitch lettering very comfortably. She decided to keep it simple – three letters in white floss.

For some reason, every time I look at it, the term x rated comes to mind. Oh dear. I think we will have to salvage that one and make it into something else.

All in all, it was a fun experiment! I enjoy stitching 3-dimensional objects. It’s always a challenge, but I find it fun!

I’ll share some tips in an upcoming blog post, in case you’re wondering how to do something similar on small pre-made 3-D objects. And I’ll have some lovely pre-felted objects for you to play with, too. With spring coming up, there are so many possibilities!

Hope your week is going well so far! See you Friday!