Self-Sufficiency: Week Five Update

Week five's challenge was to make Valentine's gifts and decor. I already shared Margaret's outfit and gift. Here she is rocking the shirt and bow on Valentine's Day (she wore the skirt and tights to church the day before, but I didn't get a picture of it):

For decor, I decided to go with a simple heart garland for the stairs. I'm always sad to take down our glittery card-displaying Christmas garland each year, so I tend to leave it up through January. Now that I have this heart garland, I can actually look forward to taking down the Christmas one.

Make your own!

Materials:
felt
embroidery floss
something with which to hang the garland (ribbon, string, twine, etc)
"fun fabrics" (net, tulle, lace, vinyl, etc) *optional*
buttons *optional*

Tools:
needle
scissors or cutting mat/rotary cutter
fabric marker (a regular pen or marker will do)
stencil or cookie cutter *optional*

1. Cut out hearts. I free-handed one on a piece of felt and cut 25 identical hearts from pink, purple, red, and cream-colored felt. You can use a stencil or cookie cutter, if you prefer, or make each of your hearts unique. The size and number you make depends on how large you want the garland to be.

2. Cut out embellishment fabric. I cut more identical hearts from net and vinyl to jazz up some of the felt hearts.

3. Arrange hearts. I arranged my hearts in a pattern, alternately facing up and down, because I'm anal like that. I stacked the net on the hot pink hearts and the vinyl on the purple ones.

4. Stitch hearts together. I overlapped the edges of each heart and stitched them together using embroidery floss. The first time I went through and just stitched a simple 'x', but it didn't look funky enough, so I added a button at each joint. It might be fun to cut button holes on one side of each heart and stitch a button on the other, to make it an interactive piece for older kids. I didn't think of that in time, so my buttons aren't functional.

5. Stitch hangers to ends of garland. I used twine.

6. Hang and enjoy! I tried clipping some family pictures to the garland with clothespins, and that looked really cute, but Margaret wouldn't leave them alone. Maybe when she's a bit older we can leave little love letters on the garland.