Felt Danish Heart Purse Tutorial

I've always loved the look of woven paper Danish Christmas hearts and when I saw these felt ones on the Felt Cafe blog the other day I was inspired to have a go at making one in felt myself. I decided to turn it into a small purse and here's how I did it...

You will need:

Two colours of felt, I used some felted sweaters. Approximately 4" x 12" each.
Some fabric for the lining. Approximately 4" x 12".
Needle and thread.
Button.
I used a sewing machine for the lining but it could be done by hand.

An internet search for Danish Christmas heart will bring up lots of directions on how to assemble these hearts so I'm not going to go into huge detail here. This is the link from the Felt Cafe blog. There are some very fancy designs out there but I decided to start with the simplest possible one.

You could cut out a template to use as a pattern, or wing it like I did. The shape you need is a square (mine was 3.5" wide) with a semi-circle added to the top edge.

Fold your felt in half and lay the pattern on the the felt so that the bottom edge of the square is on the fold. Cut one piece (on the fold) from each colour. Make two equally spaced cuts from the folded edge, through both layers of felt, just slightly longer than the square.

Weave the two pieces together thinking about weaving through the loops rather than up and over them.

To make the lining cut out a piece of fabric the same size as one of your pieces of felt. Iron one of the long edges over by about 0.75" and then fold in half longways with the right side in. Stitch along the remaining sides about 0.5" from the edge. It's probably best to try and make sure the fit is right before you sew it as I think different thickness felt would need a slightly different sized lining. Trim with pinking shears close to the stitching.

Decide which side you would like to leave open and fit the lining into the heart so that the open edge is across the rounded part of the heart on that side. Stitch the lining to the felt around the whole opening by hand. Now stitch the other rounded side of the heart closed along the edge, and continue stitching all the way around the heart shape to give it some stability. You could use blanket stitch and contrasting thread but I decided to try and match my thread so you couldn't really see the stitching.

Cut a button hole in the top flap of the open side and stitch a button to the inside of the back flap.

Give to your three-year old daughter so she can fill it with small rubber princess clothes.

If you do make one I'd love to see pictures.

My new wooly dryer balls

Okay, not the most exciting of things I admit, but very useful. I've been using plastic dryer balls for a while but one of them split in half recently so I needed to replace them, as I do think they help reduce the drying time and soften things up. Since I bought them I've read that they are made from PVC which isn't the most eco-friendly of materials, and I've seen (expensive) felted wool ones available to buy online. Seeing as I'd just ordered some natural merino roving for some other projects, I thought I'd have a go at making some felted wool balls myself. I used a combination of needle-felting and wet-felting to form them and then finished them off by sticking them in the washing machine inside an old nylon tights leg. I started by making four smaller ones like I'd seen online, but after running them through with a load of laundry I realised that it would drive me nuts trying to locate four golf-sized balls in every load, so I enlarged two of them to about the same size as the plastic balls. I decided to leave them natural because I didn't want any dye rubbing off onto our laundry but I think I might add some coloured roving to other two balls and turn them into the kids' presents for inside the Jack Horner pie. I just need to be a bit more careful when I'm needle-felting because I managed to stab myself twice and then snap off all five needles on my tool whilst making these.

I enjoyed trying out the wet-felting for these and I've just got this Feltique book which has some lovely projects for all different kinds of felt, so I think I might try making some wet-felted sheets of felt soon.

A hat for the princess-obsessed one

There's not been much crafty stuff going on here the last week because we've all been flaked out with the flu, but I've finally managed to get an action shot of a felt hat that I made for Freja. A crown for the princess-obsessed one:



I also made another needle-felted pouch. Needle-felting is so much fun, I've just ordered a load more roving so will hopefully have some more projects to share soon.



I need to get cracking on a few things for Christmas presents which I won't be able to post until after Santa's been (sorry Mum, no use trying to get a sneak preview here!) and of course, I need to come up with some little pressies for our Jack Horner Pie.