Happy Valentine's Day To Me

I decided to drag out an old craft pamphlet when I found an unadorned red sweatshirt in my closet last week.  I made a heart sweatshirt many years ago and it wore out.  I always really liked it.  I found the pamphlet in my fabric bin and it even had the original pattern I made.  PERFECT!

The first sweatshirt I decorated I used heart fabric that had hearts in a preprinted square grid.  Made it very easy to stitch.  This time I couldn't find any heart fabric like that.  I saw a fat quarter with wonderful crazy colors and decided I would really like to use it.

First thing I did was cut out the heart and serge the edge to keep it from raveling in subsequent washes.  Then I turned the sweatshirt inside out found the center line of the sweatshirt and the heart.  I pinned them together.  Using a very large stitch I basted the heart to the sweatshirt using a starburst pattern each line beginning from the center.  This held my heart in place for all the grid stitching I needed to do.

The pattern said to use chalk to mark grid lines and that just wasn't working.  The lines just weren't showing up as well as I would have liked.  I ended up using a black felt tip pen.  I used it lightly not letting it bleed through to the sweatshirt.  I figured if the black felt tip pen didn't wash out it would at least be on the back of the colorful fabric and also under the sweatshirt stitching.  Bottom line it would show.  I just checked and all the pen marking did indeed wash out.  I was lucky.

I used yellow thread to show on top.  Quite frankly it scared me half to death.  It seemed SO bright when deciding which color to use.  I kept coming back to it as being the one that accented the fabric the best.  I decided to quit being such a scaredy-cat and just do it.  I'm glad I did as it's not obnoxious at all.  It really does accent nicely.

After the stitching was the job of going back through and snipping each thread tale off.  Lots of thread tales!  Then I went through with my pointy sharp Fiskars scissors and cut each block.  After everything was cut it needed to be washed to get the flaps to curl.  For the next couple washes it will curl a bit more.

I already wore it out today to go to the Weavers and Spinners Open House and I got lots of compliments.  Compared to their work I didn't think it deserved mentioning.  I think though that other creative people appreciate other people's works of art.  This shirt definitely qualifies as that.

The pamphlet I used is called Mc Call's Creates Snip Snip Sweatshirts.  It's copywrited 1991.  It seems I make one about every 10 years.  I'll have to pack it for 2020.