First Steps: Hand-sewing A Heart | ENGI 210: Prototyping and Fabrication

Good morning, everyone! It is Thursday, September 11th, and I’ve finished hand-sewing a heart for the first time. Here’s how I got to this point.

We had our first project, where we each got to choose which object we wanted to sew. I decided to sew a heart because, even though I am experienced in sewing leather together using back stitching when I made the first prototype for the navigational assistance device for a blind dog, I wanted to learn more hand-sewing techniques, such as whip stitching and embroidery stitching. I figured that starting a simple project like a cushioned heart would be an excellent way for me to ease my transition from machine sewing to hand sewing and dive into hand-sewing along the way.

First, I cut out a paper heart to use as a reference. I folded a paper in half, drew half of a heart on the top portion using a pencil, and then cut along the lines to make a heart template.

papers

The heart template after it was cut out from the initial construction paper.

From there, I drew two hearts on a piece of red, thick scrap fabric using a fabric crayon, and then I cut out the two hearts using fabric shears.

The fabric heart cutouts from the initial red scrap piece of fabric.

I used a blanket stitch to sew the two hearts together to create the finished product. Before stitching the two hearts together, I did some blanket stitching practice with scrap upholstery fabric and embroidery floss of a different color. I aimed for consistency, which mainly worked well on my practice attempts.

The practice fabric I used with the blanket stitches I made.

At this point, I was confident I could execute a blanket stitch well. With the pink embroidery floss ready on the needle and the two hearts on top of each other with the back sides facing inward, I began sewing the two hearts together.

Sewing progress!

During the sewing process, I ran out of floss available on the needle I used, so I had to trim a floss segment off and start anew with a new floss string. If there is one way I can fix this issue for a second attempt or redo the project, it would be that I should get a longer string of embroidery floss prepared on the needle beforehand, or leave the floss on its spool and let the loose end be the short end that extends past the needle.

Additionally, I held the two hearts by hand, so some edges of the top heart went past the bottom heart while sewing. For a future attempt, I will use pins to secure the heart pieces together before sewing.

Anyways, about halfway through sewing, I stuffed the heart with polyester fiber fill to create the beginnings of a red heart cushion.

Pictures of stuffing inside the heart!

After that, I sewed the last edge of the two hearts together to close up the heart. With that, my heart pillow is done! Although I acknowledge that my heart isn’t perfect and my stitching is uneven, I am still proud of the result.

A couple of pictures of the final resulting heart!

Here is my workspace after cleaning up:

Cost Breakdown:

Raw Materials:

Fabric: a 12-inch by 8-inch rectangle of red scrap fabric from the OEDK, approximately $5, since we used only 1 yard of fabric
Embroidery floss: DMC pink embroidery floss, approximately $1 for the project
Polyester fiber fill stuffing: I’ve used a small portion of a $4 fill bag (from Hobby Lobby), so about $0.50 for the whole project
Construction paper: about $1
Practice materials (scrap upholstery fabric and embroidery floss): $0, since they are scrap materials provided by the OEDK

Tools:

Sewing needle: $0.01
Fabric shears: $16.99 (from Hobby Lobby)

Labor:

$10/hour working at the OEDK (average on-campus employment wage) for 2 hours = $20

Total Cost: $44.50, accounting for all the tools I need to purchase beforehand

Maybe I should go with hand sewing to fix my college mascot shirt in the future…