Gathered Garland with Paper Hearts

 

So my craft room/home office currently looks like this... I'm waiting for an IKEA delivery as we speak with a new shelf for all this stuff. I had it all on two not-so great shelves. I gave one away and moved the other to my pantry so now I'm ready for something new..... all this to say... when I was at IKEA last week buying the unit I was given a free gift.... 

I was given two packs of IKEA red packets... not a great gift considering how much I spent... but it got my valentine wheels turning! (Red Packets are used here during the Chinese New Year to give money to children)

I cut the packets in half, then cut each half into a heart. I used some scrapbooking scissors for some different patterns. I ended up not using the ones that have the IKEA logo on them. These are the paper portion of this project.

 

Now, I wanted to make a garland with these, and I decided to use fabric as a base, gathered fabric to be exact. I had some pink flannel around, but any fabric you have will work. I had to sew a few pieces together to get the length I needed.

I like to be lazy when doing gathers, so I set my machine up to do all the work. Your stitch length should be a long as it can go. (5.0 on mine) and the tension as tight as it can go (9 on mine)

 Feed your fabric into the machine and it should gather before your eyes. I love this way of gathering.... so easy, your machine does all the work.

 Be sure to tie off both ends... you don't want to lose those beautiful gathers..

 Now, change your tension back to normal and sew the hearts down the center of the gathers. This will attach the hearts as well as to further secure the ruffles.

 I love it! I finally decided to hang it here on our entertainment center...

 And a little playing around with photoshop...I'm totally new to this....

 Oh and I had extra hearts, so I just sewed them together. Only downside of this is that the other side is white on each heart, so it has to lay on a flat surface.

 Have you linked up your valentine (and other goodies) to the party this week?

 

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