💜Day 3: “Love Letter”

Hearts a-flutter for your Valentine? Create a love “note” from fabric, in which little hearts appear to float up out of the envelope!

Supplies:

4 fabrics (layer cake cuts are fine)- background, envelope, envelope lining and hearts! Here I used Windham Fabrics’ Bedrock line for vivid color and just enough surface interest. (Lining was a scrap of batik that sung nicely…)

Coordinating thread: if you do this color scheme, I love 3 shades of Aurifil 50wt in bright white, purple and a very vivid deep pink (2024, 4020 and 4225)

MistyFuse!

Heavyweight double-sided fusible such as Peltex- an 9″ x 11″ piece (this will give you a little design leeway, the project will finish at 8″ x 10″)

Sharp fabric scissors (for cutting those hearts)

Hearts 💕:

MistyFuse the dark pink fabric, and slice into 1 1/2″ squares. Cut each square in half…begin to cut at bottom…and curve around to create top. You might want to trace a line the first few times, but you’ll quickly find that you can free-cut very easily. One of my favorite shapes!

Envelope:

Cut an 8″ square of the white fabric, and press into the shape of an envelope-

Add a “lining” by fusing a 5″ square to a corner of the wrong side of the white fabric-

Then apply a piece of MistyFuse to the back of the “envelope” (this will be the right side of the fabric):

Putting it all together:

1. Fuse purple fabric to fusible (use your pressing sheet underneath, remember the back of the heavyweight fusible is, umm, fusible too ;))
2. Fuse the body (not the flap) of your envelope to the background –

3. Arrange hearts and shape flap so that it curls a bit to one side (use tiny scraps of MistyFuse to anchor the placement of the flap)-

Time to stitch! I simply followed the lines of the envelope and the hearts, then stitched simple radiating lines in the background.

Now, press a piece of fabric to the back of the fusible (perhaps a light fabric so you can write a 📝:)). Trim and finish by zig-zagging your piece, then add piping with a second line of zigzag to give the valentine a more finished look:

A note on finishing with piping: after many experiments, I’ve decided I prefer to handle the final corner by crossing the ends at a right angle and stitching through the intersection with a VERY small straight stitch, then trimming.

Have a great day and see you back here tomorrow for a fun reverse-image technique! 💜