I watched a video the other day from Lisa Capen Quilts on YouTube (you can learn anything on YouTube) and I fell in love with a wall hanging she was making themed around candy conversation hearts. First, I LOVE candy conversation hearts. I used to go through them in elementary school and make sure that any I passed out to my classmates for our Valentine’s Day party didn’t include one that said “cute” or “kiss me” to a boy who I didn’t want to get the wrong idea. C’mon!! We ALL did that. Admit it. 🙂
Lisa’s method was the traditional way to print or draw a picture of the design, use a light box to trace the design and words, cut out fabric backed with Heat-n-Bond, and then using a satin stitch on a domestic sewing machine, she appliqued the hearts onto a background. At one point in her video, she said it was “a little time consuming”. Ya THINK??
I really wanted to do this but have absolutely no desire whatsoever for all that work. Especially when I have a power tool, a.k.a my embroidery machine, to do it for me. And I have a very nifty piece of software called Simply Applique whose mission in life is to assist lazy embroiderers like myself. Here’s how I did it. Oh, and I’ve started a YouTube channel! I would love it if you would subscribe! I do not, and will not, monetize my channel so any products I talk about are my own personal opinion.
The hearts are an image I grabbed from Google Images which I printed and scanned into my Brother Scan-N-Cut. Once scanned, I uploaded it into the Brother Canvas Workspace to resize. Then I downloaded the image back to the Scan-n-Cut to cut out the hearts. The hearts were cut from fabric already backed by Heat-n-Bond. The background dimensions are 10″ x 26″ Kona white and then I needed a few extra inches all around the outside of Warm & White for the batting and I chose a dark pink solid for the backing and binding. The hearts are from a fat quarter bundle of solids from Free Spirit and the border is a mini-charm pack called Surrounded by Love from Moda. All the fabrics were from my stash.
The interior stipple is from a stencil I have and I used a Frixon marker to draw out the stipple design, because I’m lame and cannot do a freehand simple stipple. If I had been thinking ahead, I’d of stippled the background first on the embroidery machine because I have several stipple designs. Or even a background heart design would be cute. I just did a simple “X” on each border square.
Here’s the final product! I think it turned out absolutely adorable!! (If I do say so myself!) Now I have a cute wall hanging to remind hubs how I feel about him this coming Valentine’s Day. 🙂