Beginner Hand Embroidery Tutorial: Happy Heart

Welcome to the first in a series of 4 Beginner Hand Embroidery Patterns.

Happy Heart is nice and simple to stitch and you will learn 2 basic stitches: Back Stitch and Fly stitch.

You can make a beautiful piece of hoop art for your wall or a hanging decoration for your home – why not fill it with lavender for a wonderful aroma in the room you display it in.

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Materials required…

Wool Felt, choose from an array of gorgeous colours.
Embroidery Floss, I love DMC stranded for the quality and colours available.
Sticky Fabri Solvy Stabiliser,a nice easy way to transfer a design to felt.
Needle – I use a size 5 or 7 when stitching with felt.
Scissors – nice sharp pair of embroidery scissors.
For the Hanging Decoration… Extra Wool Felt for the back, Polyfill Stuffing and Ribbon
For the Hoop Art…
5 inch hoop (Flexi hoops are great for framing),
Fabric
Bondaweb

You will also need the Pattern Template…

Pattern Template – available from the Stitchdoodles Free Resource Library (link to access at the bottom of this post)

Note on the Sticky Fabri Solvy (SFS) – This makes transferring your design on to the felt so easy and all you need to do is wash it away after.

If you don’t want to use SFS there are other ways to make templates which you can find in my Resource Library with the printable: 5 Easy Peasy Ways to create templates for felt patterns.

Let’s get making…

Trace the heart template (available from the link below) on to your Sticky Fabri Solvy, peel off the backing and then stick it to your felt.

The Embroidery Floss I used is DMC stranded and I used 2 strands throughout to stitch the design.

Start by stitching the outer most line in back stitch.

Complete the 3 other outlines in Back Stitch alternating colours if preferred.

The centre lines are stitched in Fly Stitch – start at the top of the left line and stitch a continuous line of Fly stitch down to the bottom and then do the same to the right side.

Now trim the excess SFS off from around your design just like the picture.

Now to finish the embroidered heart…

Place the whole piece in a bowl of luke warm water (make sure the whole design is submerged) and leave it for an hour. You will see the stabilser start to dissolve just like magic!

After about an hour, take it out and run it under a tap of luke warm water to remove any little stubborn bits that are still hanging around. Then squeeze out any excess water keeping the felt flat – you can place it between 2 towels and press hard to squeeze out quite a bit of the water and then hang it up to dry.

How to display your heart in an embroidery hoop..

Iron a piece of Bondaweb to the Back of your Heart (before you cut the felt shape out).

Using sharp scissors, carefully cut around the outer edge of the heart approx. 1/8th inch from your stitches – if you are not confident then a bigger space of 1/4 inch will still look fine.

Remove the paper backing of the bondaweb and then iron the heart centrally to your chosen piece of fabric.

Hoop up your design and display!

Making a Felt Hanging Decoration…

Using sharp scissors, carefully cut around the outer edge of your stitched heart approx. 1/8th inch from your stitches – if you are not confident then a bigger space of 1/4 inch will still look fine.

Take your extra piece of wool felt and place on the back of the heart. Using a sewing thread to match the colour of the felt, sew a nice tiny neat running stitch around the edge sewing the 2 pieces together like so…

Start at one of the lower sides and sew up to the centre top – just before the centre top – take your ribbon – fold it in half and insert the 2 ends in between the pieces of felt at the top just enough so they will be sewn in securely and give you a nice hanging loop.

Continue with the running stitch and then before you reach where you started – leave a big enough gap to insert your stuffing – pop sufficiant in to plump it up so it is soft and squidgy and then close the gap and secure in the ends to the back.

Finally you need to cut the excess backing felt off (being very careful). Use the front heart piece as your guide cut around the remaining felt edges to create your heart.

And there you have it, 2 lovely options for a very simple design.