For this homework, I decided to go with the beginner option of creating a felt heart. I have no prior sewing experience, so this took me a while to get the hang of.

Creating the template and cutting the two heart shapes was straightforward .

For the first hour, I was messing around with the best way to start tying off the string to start sewing. Then, I did a simple running stitch all around the hearts, but after flipping the heart inside out, the running stitch caused the edges to be messy, and I didn’t like how the string would scrunch together. I restarted using the whip stitch, which was surprisingly easy to do. However, the whip stitch had the same issue of when turning the shape inside out, the edges would not be very clean. By then, 2 hours had gone by since I started. I decided to go with backstitches since it was more secure than a running stitch and created a clean edge. This went well, but I should’ve used more string because I ran out of string by the time I got to the top part of the heart.

Because I wanted to learn how to do an invisible/ladder stitch, I did that for the top part of the heart instead of backstitching. The invisible stitch is a cool stitch to do since the string is barely visible, but it wasn’t ideal for this thin felt fabric I was using because the edges of my fabric were very frayed from the scissor cutting.

I finished invisible stitching the rest of the heart anyway.

This is the final product. Not the most high quality/crisp heart. The edges are very rough in some spots and some stuffing is leaking out in-between stitches, but ultimately I learned how to do whip stitches, backstitches, and invisible stitches! I also learned how to tie off each stitch to secure them (thanks YouTube tutorials). Below is the finished product.

Below is a picture of my cleaned up space.

Raw Materials: $0.59
Felt fabric: $0.13
(1/3 of a 9×12 in sheet at $0.39 each)
Polyester fiberfill: $0.44
(10 g used, from 340 g bag at $14.99)
Polyester thread: $0.02
(~1 m used, from 100 m spool at $2.08–$2.19)

Labor: $7.50
Estimated time: 45 minutes (0.75 h) (if I knew what to do from the beginning and didn’t restart twice)
Rate: $10/hour

Tools (amortized small wear per project): $0.17
Hand sewing needle: $0.02 (from $6.45 pack of 40)
Fabric scissors: $0.05 (from $8.99–$16.99 pair, spread over ~200 projects)
Tools subtotal: $0.10