Valentine Heart String Decorations

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Today I had to admit that it’s February, and not even the beginning of February, but almost Valentine’s Day. It was time to finally take down my beloved snowflake garland and put up something — anything — that celebrates red, or pink, or hearts, or love, or something. For some time I’ve been meaning to make a heart decoration to take the place of my snowflake garland. This is what I made this morning: a string of hearts to hang in our living room window. (I actually made two strings, but only photographed one.) Next step will be a garland of hearts to hang horizontally over our dining table. Making these strings took me about an hour, all told, and it was satisfying because I’ve had this in mind for quite a long time. Here’s to realizing ambitions!

Here’s how I made these hearts. I bought a half-price set of cardboard hearts at the local big-box fabric store for about a dollar to use as a template. I could have drawn my own, but from past experience I know that my hearts always turn out very uneven looking. 

I had some double-sided stiff fusible interfacing left over from making a case for my husband’s Kindle. I cut this up into six-inch squares:

I also cut up my red-and-white fabric and a white backing print into six-inch squares, then fused them onto the stiff interfacing. Using a thin black gel pen, I traced around the heart onto the back side of the square.

Next, I cut out the heart shape with pinking shears to give them a pretty zig-zag edge. You could finish them with a satin stitch for a fancier look.

Then I took them to my sewing machine and sewed the hearts together by stitching a vertical line down the center of each heart. When I reached the bottom point of one heart, I just stitched off it and onto the next one, leaving a little extra thread in between so the hearts would dangle freely.

With a pair of sharp embroidery scissors, I poked a hole in the top heart of the string and pushed the loop of ribbon through the hole. 

And that was that! I think I will add a few more hearts to the next strings.