Happy Valentine’s Day friends! I found out about an extra Valentine’s Day celebration for one of my kiddos at school so I decided to make an extra heart project for him to give to his classmates. I made these cute heart shaped fabric bags filled with rice and I thought I would share a tutorial for you guys to make them as well. You can put them in the microwave and warm them up for a minute and use them as a heat pack, or you can put them in the freezer and use them as a cold pack. You could even heat them up and then put them under your sheets by your feet to warm up your toes!
They are quick and easy to make and are a perfect Valentine’s Day gift. They would also be a sweet Christmas gift, or get well soon gift, or a birthday gift, or they would be a nice thing to send to a new to college student away from home for the first time. The options are endless, and I am sure you have all of the supplies you need on hand already. You might find yourself making a whole batch like I did!
Welcome to WIP Wednesday, the Valentine’s Day edition! Apparently if it does not involve a heart, it is not happening this week! I did post 5 free tutorials and then led making the Happy Heart Ornament at the Bellingham Modern Quilt Guild meeting on Monday evening all in one week, so there are not a ton of new projects to share with you. But I am making as always!
I found a super cute Etsy shop last week and ordered a little kit of 2.5″ squares to make a heart pillow. I decided to take the day and make it yesterday and it turned out so cute! Her little mini charm packs are just adorable and I love how this came out. We are in need of some pillows on our couches and this will be perfect. I used the 2.5″ squares from the kit and then added in fabrics from my stash for the half square triangles so I could do them two at a time. I have the same kit in pink and I think I will start that one this afternoon.
Speaking of hearts….that’s pretty much all I am making right now. I told my kids I would make Happy Heart Ornaments for all of their classmates and teachers for Valentine’s Day, so I am in mass production mode now. Thankfully they are quick and cute, and apparently very photogenic! This was me closing them while watching a movie earlier this week. I thought they looked very adorable on the tray.
These are the ones I have fully finished this morning. This is 28, I decided I will make 50 total for school.
This is my in-progress basket and another 10 sewn, stuffed, and closed and just needing a Pom Pom or a hanger. Also, these are my favorite Karen Kay Buckley scissors* and they have been missing for awhile. Thankfully I found them yesterday! I had put them in a basket full of Christmas fabrics and then stacked more Christmas fabric on top of them. Whoops. My office is only a tiny barely 8’x10′ room that you would have a hard time fitting a twin bed into because it is so small. It makes me absolutely bonkers when I lose something in here since there are only a handful of spots it could be! I am just glad to have found them again and they were put to immediate use on heart making last night.
It has been a good week, I feel like I got a lot accomplished and I always like that feeling. I pulled out my Nespresso machine and started drinking coffee again last week. Obviously with how much I have managed to get done that was one of my best life choices recently! Tomorrow is my birthday too and it is nice to have something fun and out of the ordinary to look forward to. I don’t know about you, but the up for school lunches and breakfasts and trying to get as much done with the kids out of the house and then pick up, and after school activities, dinner, homework, bath, bed schedule in the heart of winter when it is dark and dreary all the time can really wear on me. Actually, it made me tired just to type that! So I am extra grateful to get some fun, love themed projects in this week and have a fun day to look forward to tomorrow.
What about you? What are you working on right now? How do you cope with the middle of winter time, or is it easy for you? Let me know in the comments!
Happy making-
*Links marked with * are affiliate links that I may earn a small commission from at no cost to you in order to help me keep my blog and free tutorials and patterns going.
Want more fun, crafty ideas? Sign Up For My Mailing List To Have Creative Ideas Delivered To Your Inbox!
Friends! I have a VERY highly requested pattern for you today! Louie the Lovebot was on Knit Picks for years but apparently has not been for awhile now. Every year starting in January I have been getting daily requests for the pattern for a couple years now. Well, I finally got by bum in gear and redesigned the pattern for you guys, huzzah! He is now knit all in one piece like my new patterns, placing stitch markers to come back to and pick up stitches for the limbs.
The best part of the new Louie? I am posting him here for free! Yeah!
I’m back again with another version of the Happy Heart Ornaments I have been sharing this week! Pinterest has been showing me a bunch of Sashiko and Boro projects recently and I thought it would be a fun to do a little experiment with that kind of style for the heart ornaments! I know I am not alone in hoarding little teeny tiny scraps of my favorite fabrics from over the years, including bits that are really too small to be useful. That little gnome on the bottom right ornament was the inspiration for this version! I found it while I have been playing in my scraps with all of the other ornaments I have been making. It is much too small to be useful, but too precious to throw out.
I understand that this version is not actually Sashiko or Boro since it is not hand stitched. But you could certainly do that too! I just love the Wabi-Sabi style of these, especially since sewing with raw edges is not something I normally enjoy and this pushes me outside of my crafty comfort zone.
Just like with yesterday’s tutorial, I will show you how to do the basic sides and you can click back to the original tutorial for finishing instructions. Let’s get started, shall we?
I’m back today with another version of the Happy Heart Ornament I have been sharing this week! I love sewing with scraps and improvisational piecing is one of my favorite ways to turn otherwise unusable small fragments of fabric into fun and beautiful creations. I especially love when you have held on to precious small bits of a beloved fabric for years and you can make it into something sweet that showcases your cherished pieces. The pink panda and plaid fabrics in that top right ornament are some of my favorites that I have been using up the very last pieces of for years. I love how they came together in this ornament and I will treasure it and enjoy pulling it out for Valentine’s Day every year.
I am going to share a quick tutorial on how I pieced these ornaments today, but if you need help finishing your heart ornament you can click back to the original Happy Heart Ornament Tutorial I posted earlier.
I’m back today with a variation on the Happy Heart Ornament I shared with you yesterday, yeah! I frequently cut my scraps into 2.5″ squares that I put in a container to have ready to go and am always on the look out for good 2.5″ square patterns. Plus, I love mini charm packs! I made an ornament with a few of those squares while I was working on the heart ornament pattern and loved how it came out, so I thought I would share how to make it with you guys! This tutorial is going to be very similar to the one I posted yesterday, but I know sometimes you need to see things exactly to help when making something.
I’ve got a fun little ornament tutorial for you today! I am going to show you the basic version today, but then I have a couple other patchwork and pieced versions as well I will be sharing over the next couple days. I hope that this cute little heart can act as a blank canvas for your creativity to shine!
You can sew these by machine, or by hand for a lovely little handwork project! I’ve been really enjoying small, slow stitching, handwork projects recently. They would even be a great first project for getting a kiddo into sewing! I can’t wait to see what you make!
Happy Friday! We are heading into a 3 day weekend for both of my kiddos and I am very excited to have an extra day off. My boys are in two districts, my oldest has special needs and is in a school that supports him in the neighboring city and district. Of course it is totally great for him to be somewhere he is thriving, but most of the time the two district schedules don’t match so I often have one of the boys home and the other still in school. Like Fridays my oldest is out at noon every week and my youngest has a late start on Mondays at least once a month. Anyway I’m rambling, but I am looking forward to an extra day of downtime for everyone this weekend.
It has been a good week. I am very pleased January is at the end, and I have been working on two different free tutorials to share on the blog here, which has definitely helped my mood all week. Here are my favorites from the week:
I know I mentioned on Wednesday that I went antiquing with my friend Mitzi. We also stopped in a yarn store that had a pet axolotl! I was so excited to see it swimming around! My kids love axolotls but I don’t think I had ever seen one in real life before.
I found little chairs for The Darlings at Michaels! I am so excited about these and can’t wait to start taking photos of bear scenes to share with you!!
I mentioned my tiny half square triangles on Wednesday, but I got this cute little pinwheel quilt top sewn up for The Darlings this week! Those HST’s are 1″ finished, and I am now wanting to sew everything tiny. I am just waiting for the backing fabric to arrive and I need to find or make a little bed for this to go on! And more tiny quilts, obviously!
And finally, we always laugh because our dogs don’t like to touch each other. It is not both of them, the poodle, Coco, (the black one) wants to touch every one and every thing all of the time. Juniper (the white one) is very neurotic, standoffish, and highly anxious and doesn’t want any one or any thing to touch her ever, especially Coco. So we always document it when ever we see them snuggling together and actually touching.
I hope you guys have had a lovely week full or creativity and making! Leave me a comment and let me know your favorites from the week!
Woo! Anyone else feel like things are moving at a million miles an hour right now? The school schedule sure does take up a lot of my time it seems, but I have been managing to get some creating done in between mom duties. Do you want to see what I’ve been up to?
I got all of my Jelly Roll strips made into Rainbow Quilt blocks! I got 13 blocks out of the roll, and apparently the poodle decided I was taking a picture of her and not my design wall of quilt blocks. Its Ok, her bed and harness fit right in with the color scheme.
I took a creative detour after getting the Rainbow blocks done and used all of the chopped corners to make some teeny Half Square Triangles! These are 1.5″ in this photo and will finish at 1″. So tiny!!
I just got my rainbow quilt top sewn together this morning. This was my design wall as I sat down to type this post.
My plan was to make the extra block into a pillow, but I happened to set it on this cute little bed I just found for The Darlings and now I am thinking it might become a tiny bear quilt instead. Also, please ignore my messy cutting table, creativity is not always very organized! I ordered the backing and binding for the full size quilt this morning, with enough extra to make this a mini quilt OR a pillow. I will see how I feel once the fabric arrives!
My friend Mitzi and I went antiquing this weekend and this was my haul. My plan is to turn this all into Darlings accessories!
My Louie The Lovebot pattern has not been available for some time now and I have been getting lots of requests for him to be available again. I started rewriting the pattern last June (*ahem*), but didn’t manage to get him finished until this week. I am getting the pattern typed after I write this post, then I will re test the pattern, and I should have him available again soon! Woohoo! And, he will be FREE!! Even better.
And working on Louie has reminded me Valentine’s Day is coming soon. I started on this heart project and I am excited to share it with you soon!
As I look back over it I got lots of things done, but I definitely was not feeling very accomplished before laying it all out in one post. It is amazing how hard you can be on yourself and your brain tells you that you are not doing very much when you actually are. Or, at least that is how my brain works….
What about you? What have you been working on?
Want more fun, crafty ideas? Sign Up For My Mailing List To Have Creative Ideas Delivered To Your Inbox!
I am so excited to have another free tutorial for you! And two tutorials in one week, how exciting is that?!
Ever since I released my Over The Rainbow Tote pattern I have been wanting to make the block into a quilt. I have decided to experiment this year and try posting free patterns here on my blog, and since it is dreary January in the Pacific Northwest, starting my free patterns and tutorials with this rainbow block feels perfect! And in case you were wondering, this block is a bit different than the one in the pattern.
So let’s get quilting! This will make one 18.5″x18.5″ quilt block. If you are making more than one rainbow block you will just need to add in these same yardages per block. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments below.
Supplies (Per 18.5″x18.5″ block)
(3) Fat Eighths For Arcs or Jelly Roll Strips
(1) Fat Quarter For Background
Basic sewing supplies- cutting mat, rotary cutter, cutting rulers, sewing machine with needles and thread, scissors, etc.
