The Journey of Sewing a Felt Heart | ENGI 210: Prototyping and Fabrication

Hello all, and welcome to my third blog post. Today I will be detailing how I completed my hand sewing assignment and created the lovely felt heart seen on the cover of this post.

I started off by drawing out my idea, as you can see below. While this was a very simple project, I feel that I approach things better when I have an idea of what I want my final result to look like. I chose the felt heart project as I felt it matched my skill level. I decided to use a running stitch as well, as I felt more comfortable with it after having practiced it in class. I wanted to challenge myself a bit more, so I added buttons to my design to make my heart a bit cuter.

Image 1: Design Sketch

I then picked out my materials. I picked a large piece of blue felt from the prototyping cart, a spool of embroidery thread, two buttons, and some small leftover pieces of cloth to use as stuffing. I also picked some tools – a pair of the cloth scissors, a needle, a threading tool, and a pen. I worked downstairs in the OEDK conference room tables, as my things were already there and it was unreserved. I began by cutting my heart shape out of the felt piece. I used my pen to draw a heart shape on the felt, then I folded it to cut out two hearts.

Image 2: Felt with Heart Cut Out

Once I had my hearts ready, I decided to start by sewing the buttons on one piece. This seemed like the best way to do it easily and ensure that the threads from sewing the buttons would be hidden. I threaded my needle with the threading tool, which probably took up the majority of my time. It was very difficult. I cut a short bit of thread and tied a knot. I then sewed both buttons onto the right side of one of the felt pieces by looping the thread through the holes in the buttons. I really like the way it turned out, as they look almost like little eyes.

Image 3: Front Felt Piece with Buttons Sewn On

Then, I started sewing the full heart shape. I rethreaded the needle and made another knot at the end after cutting a larger amount of thread. I laid the front piece on top of the back piece and put the needle through only the front piece to hide the knot inside the heart. I started doing a running stitch along the edges of the heart, following the shape of the heart. Below are my felt pieces ready to be sewn.

Image 4: Felt Pieces Ready to Sew

Once I got about 3/4 of the way around the heart, I stopped sewing to stuff it. I left the needle and thread in the heart so I could easily continue after it was stuffed. I couldn’t find the stuffing when I was making my heart, but I found some small scraps of cloth that I don’t think would’ve been useful for anything else and used those as stuffing. I poked the cloth into the ends of the heart with my pen and stuffed the rest in the main part of the heart just by pressing it inside.

Image 5: Stuffing and Half Sewn Heart

Once I put the stuffing in the heart, I finished sewing the heart. I tried to make a knot between the tips of the two pieces of felt, so it is fairly hidden.

Image 6: Knot at Tip of Heart

I cut the thread and my heart was completed! I cleaned up my workspace by putting leftover felt back in the cart and returning the extra thread to the embroidery thread box. I returned the tools to where I found them as well. I also swept up a few small felt pieces and thread pieces that were on the table. Here is a picture of my completed product and my clean workspace.

Image 7: Clean Workspace

This whole project took me about an hour to do, including my design sketches and getting materials. My full materials list was a rectangular piece of felt (about 5inx7in), a spool of embroidery thread, two buttons, and a small handful of cloth. My tools list was a pair of scissors, a pen, a needle, and a threading tool. Each of these items on their own are fairly cheap, meaning that the most expensive part of this project was actually my labor. I’ve included a cost analysis table below, based on minimum wage for labor and the cost of items online:

Item	Cost
Labor (~1hr)	$7.25
Felt	$0.25
Thread	$1
Button (x2)	$0.50
Cloth	$1
Scissors	$5
Pen	$2
Needle	$0.50
Threading Tool	$2

Total	$19.50

Overall, this project was not too expensive, costing $19.50. It was kind of hard for me to get right as I am not the best at sewing, but I am quite happy with how my product came out. One of my friends really likes it, and I’m hoping to give it to him as a gift after this class. I think I learned a decent amount about sewing, especially different tools, and I’d love to try out more complicated stitches in the future. I think I’d feel confident making simple projects, sewing a hole shut, or adding buttons onto clothes.