Valentine Tutorial

Valentine's Day has become family day here at the Smith home. And we love crafts, and with all the fun Valentine making ideas, I thought we needed a place to put all our love notes. So I made these quick and easy pocket chair covers. Made of felt with only minor sewing, this is a project anyone can do. The first one is the hardest because you'll be making it without a pattern. But it's forgiving (like love should be!) .

Supplies:

You'll need some felt yardage (You could use craft squares, it just won't sit on the corners of the chair, but hang from middle)
sewing machine (hot glue will work in a pinch)
Velcro
pinking shears (optional)

(All my photos are clickable - so click if you need more detail)

First Step: Take a quick measurement of your chair back - add about 12 inches - just use common sense, and know that more is better than not enough. My first one didn't fit because I didn't leave room for ease around the curved heart seam. Now cut a rectangle of felt at desired length. Mine are appx. 15 inches long, which makes for a nice heart shape.

Second Step: Fold the rectangle around the chair as shown in picture and pin at top. Make sure to leave some space (an inch should do) on the sides so you can sew that curved seam to create the heart shape. Now once you've adjusted the top pins, pin in a curved pattern. To match the seam on the other side, you can take it off the chair, fold it in half, and pin accordingly.

Third Step: Take it to the sewing machine and sew along pinned area. Note that you only need to make a small seam running from the top to about 2 inches down the side...if you sew past that, you'll not have a way to attach it to the chair.




Fourth Step: Now Go ahead and cut around the seams with pinking shears and make the heart shape. An easy way to do this to make sure it's symmetrical is to fold it in half matching seams.
This will leave you with a nice big heart and on the back side you'll have some "straps". AND more importantly...now you have your pattern. (Checking the fit on the chair at this point is suggested)


Fifth Step: Cut a heart from contrasting felt for the pocket. You'll want it to be about 1 inch smaller than your other heart. I used my already sewn heart as a pattern, then I folded it in half and cut about an inch from around the edges. I laid it down and snipped till I liked it.

Sixth Step: Sew your contrasting heart to the base heart. Remember to leave an opening at the top to slip in your love notes. Also note that if you don't sew high enough on your heart, it will flop over. This is remedied by sewing to the highest point of the heart.

Seventh Step: Use self adhesive Velcro to attach the back straps to the big heart. I didn't have any, so I hot glued mine on. Now put it on your chair! (I know there are lots of kinds of chair backs, so this MAY not work for your chair...but should for most.)

Eighth Step: Now if you were smarter than me, you cut out all the smaller contrasting hearts at the same time since you had a pattern that wasn't sewn on :)...but if not, it's okay. You just need to now use your already made chair pocket as a pattern to cut out all the pieces for as many as you need, then sew them up accordingly.

Additionally, you can embroider names, initials, sew felt pretties, or, as in my case, use iron on appliques. If I had the time, I would have embroidered beautiful name motifs...and if I had had less time I would have sewn our names in felt, but since I had even LESS time...the iron on initials were just the perfect touch.

Happy <3 day.

"And His banner of me is Love" Song of Solomon 2:4