February Fill Hearts

I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day. I will leave that to the younger generation. But I do believe in love, sharing and caring. I love making hearts of any shape. I use hearts to decorate my Christmas tree. I use them as gifts. Talking about gift giving, if you haven't already entered my blogiversary on the previous post please do. The entry is open until Sunday 16/2/14. 

In this post I have a few hearts and a finished journal cover to show you. Enjoy!

Heart making is addictive. I started last year and I have been making them ever since. Each heart has it own unique design and embroidery on them. I pick up a piece of fabric and just start stitching. I like some more than others. I do love this one in the above photo. I like it just as it is!

Another heart I finished and stuffed a few days ago. I patched it with a piece of upholstery fabric. I only used dyed fabric on my first few hearts, but I thought I would add some other vintage fabric to some of them, and I love it. 

I found this I love you pop-up card template on Pinterest so I thought I would try to make one for February fill hearts. If you want to make it to give to that special someone, just click on the link here.

In preparing for my textile trip in March. My three friends told me that they will keep a journal on the trip. I already have a blank journal, but I want to make a cover for it. I set to work layering dyed silk fabric including one from a silk blouse. I appliqued a few hearts for good measure!

Lots of stitches and embroidery all over the piece.  I love stitching on my dyed silk. It feels so soft and lovely when I handle the journal. I will enjoy using it on my trip.

Have a peak inside my journal. I added a few pockets inside to store receipts, tickets and cards. I've also used Gesso on the pages before I started writing on them.

This is the underneath of the journal. I like using sheet-cloth for the base of my piece. This particular piece came from an Indian publisher. When we get the journals at my work they come in large and heavy parcels and this sheet-cloth was the outer layer on the parcel. It was perfectly hand stitched. I had to unstitch all those stitches carefully so as not to rip the cloth. A total of one yard of fabric was used for each parcel. We receive at least one of these parcels per month, so you can see how much fabric I saved each year. It is lovely to stitch with. 

Until next time.

Nat