This week, I am going to show you how to make heart pillow. We are so close to Valentine's Day and I wanted to create this blog as a community service project for breast cancer patients.
I know that October is breast cancer awareness month, but I was told that these pillows are needed all year round, so I chose Valentine's Day to promote making heart pillows.
I had a Girl Scout in my troop, Rachel, that made over 500 helping hearts for her gold award. I am not asking you to make that many but I do want you to try to make a few.
She donated her pillows to a local hospital that specializes in breast cancer treatment.
The pillow are given to the patients, to help them recover. They are used to place under their arm when resting, as not to harm an incision. They are also used as a seat belt protector, so that the strap does not rub across their chests.
I made all of these to donate and I am going to show you how to make these as well. I used felt for 3 of them. Felt does not fray, it keeps it's shape and it is soft. I also make them in cotton, because they can be washed and dried.
For the felt pillows, I used hand stitches to write out sayings. If you wish to do the same, please go to my blog about Hand Sewing and Embroidery. I used the back stitch, the chain stitch and stem stitch.
The PDF's patterns can be located on the website, delarosadesigns.net
I always like to transfer my paper patterns to cardstock. I makes for a traceable pattern.
These are my printed sheets, if you can print on cardstock, you will print two, place together at the center of the heart, with tape. The next step is to cut these out because I could not print on cardstock.
I have my patterns cut and I am going to place them on my cardstock.
You will use the edge of your cardstock to tape your hearts down and cut the cardstock carefully. You will do this twice, so that you can make a whole heart.
You can see that I put the straight of the cardstock together to create my heats. Don't forget to write what the text onto your new heart. Now I have something that I can use to trace my hearts onto fabric.
Let's Get Started!
In this video, you will be learning to trace, pin, cut and sew your heart pillows. You will be using the techniques of the small pillow to do the remainder of the cotton pillows you will be doing. You do not have to make your pillows out of felt; I just wanted to give you some ideas and to help you create unique pieces.
Always leave an opening to your project so that you can stuff it, remember do not try to put your opening at a curve or point.
We are stuffing and finishing our pillows in this video. Remember that you are using the techniques for the small pillow to make your creations.
Every time I finished a stuffed project, I like to give it a squish and help the poly-fil get even.
Here are more examples of pillows I made to donate to the clinic.
This is a good project for learning how to turn a circle, transition at points and to make openings.
I do hope that you take me up on working on the helping heart pillows. It would be wonderful for you to make what you can to donate. If you live in San Antonio, my contact is Susan Soulek, Breast Clinic Navigator at Metro Office Building #636. Her number is (210)757-2165.
If you live elsewhere, just type into Google, Breast Clinics in your area and see if they will take your pillows.
Next week, we are going to built our sewing kit and also make a bag to hold our sewing notions. I do hope you enjoyed this video.
Love and world peace, Ms. Ida
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