raggedy heart tutorial

Here is a tutorial to make a simple raggedy edged heart. As this is my first time writing a tutorial please let me know if you spot any obvious mistakes or omissions. Also please excuse the quality of the photos - the weather in the UK was not cooperating when I made the hearts - it was being all rainy and overcast!

To make a raggedy heart you need the following:

1 Fat Quarter of fabric (or less - you can easily make two hearts with a full FQ)
A piece of thin wadding
Iron on interfacing
A piece of ribbon




1. Draw a heart shape on a piece of cardboard. Mine turned out approx 8 inches by 8 1/2 inches. Make a second heart shape template approx a quarter of an inch smaller than the first. If you would like your finished heart to have fluffier edges make your second template half an inch smaller.




2. Cut out two fabric hearts using the larger template, then one wadding heart and two interfacing hearts using the smaller template.



3. Iron each interfacing heart onto the wrong side of each fabric heart.



4. Make a sandwich by putting the wadding heart in the middle of the two fabric hearts. The right side of the fabric should be on the outside. So your sandwich should be fabric, interfacing, wadding, interfacing, fabric. As you can see from the photos my heart templates were not very even so I ended up doing a bit of trimming to make sure that there was a good quarter inch of fabric round the edge of the interfacing/wadding.





5. You should end up with something that looks like this:




6. Pin a loop of ribbon to the top of the heart, sandwiching the ends inside the heart layers.



7. Pin all round your heart ready for sewing.


8. Sew round your heart using a quarter inch seam. (or half an inch if you are going for the super fluffy look)


9. Sew inside this seam to secure the wadding using whatever pattern you fancy.



10. Now for the fun bit! Using very sharp scissors, snip all the way round the outside of the heart approximately every quarter inch. Take care not to cut through the seam and into the wadding. (sorry the picture is a bit ropey - I wanted to show you a close up of the snipping)



11. They should now look like this:



12. Wash your hearts in the machine then tumble dry to fluff up the edges. I did this step twice to make them extra fluffy and crinkly. There they are - raggedy hearts done.