Quick Napkin Ring: Making a Simple Heart Paper Chain

Are you having an at home dinner date for Valentine’s Day? This is a quick and whimsical way to add a little love to your table decor. Combining work and spending time with my daughter who also loves to craft, we came up with making some simple heart paper chains to decorate our house and door for Valentine’s Day. And I added them to our table for some decoration. You can cut them in different colors, using any paper and some clear tape. Attach them to a door, lay them out on a table or string them along a window. There really is only one little trick, which I will get to.

Supplies:

-construction paper or any other paper, we used construction and origami because that’s what we had, try printer paper

-paper scissors

-tape

1. With your piece of paper you are going to fold about 1” wide accordion style, so back and forth. Make a fold then fold this fold backwards making a second fold.

outline the heart you want to cut.

circle part is not cut.

After you fold the accordion you will draw the heart line that you will cut. Now here is the trick, you cut to the fold but do not completely cut on the line around the curve of the heart. This little section is not cut, this is what creates the chain link. I looked up a few tutorials and none of them mentioned this important secret.

that little piece of chalk is the part not cut.

Do a few of these and tape the edges together. You will always end up with a half heart on the end. Connect this to the next chain.

Hang them on a door, window, make a napkin ring from them or you can lay them around your dinner plates.

Enjoy!

Tracey

DIY: House Appliqué Tea Towel Tutorial

In my last post I talked about scrap bags and the many projects you can do with a scrap bag. In this post I will teach you how to make one of those projects.  If you want to just go and buy a scrap bag you can visit my Etsy shop. They are packaged in 5 ounce bags for $5.   This is a great beginner project or a project to do with kids.  It's teaching them to use up scraps, lets not waste the fabric and be eco minded . You can buy a blank pre made dish towel or make your own, or use one you already have.   Kids can play around with the design of the layout of the houses, add grass or cement colored fabric to the border, doors can be added to your houses or not.

1. Supplies: Scissors, pinking shears (optional), cotton woven fabric scraps ranging from 1" to 3",  pins, sewing machine or you can hand sew, iron, pieces of felt (optional), dish towel. 

2. Iron your fabrics. Cut out your houses that are sized from 1" to 3". Cut out your roofs that are 1" to 1 1/2".  I cut mine out with pinking shears and also made my roofs slanted.  For the front of the houses I used a strip of mushroom printed fabric to represent the forest. I am dreaming of a farmhouse some day. 

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photo from escape brooklyn

3. After cutting out your houses lay them out on the towel for placement, pin them into place.  I left the edges exposed.  Add any little doors or windows if you want, size should be no bigger than 1/2". I used hot pink wool felt scraps for my door.   Even space them out.  A little trick to make sure your center house is centered is fold the towel in half lengthwise and press with iron.  Place your middle house on this crease.  Things don't need to be perfect, it is a little village. 

4. Zig zag or straight stitch. For my houses I zig zag stitched, and for the roof I cut out with pinking shears then straight stitched.  For zig zag the setting is width of 4 and length of .5. As you sew around the houses you can sew the door on, then continue onto the bottom of the house. 

finished towel

After you complete the sewing, iron once again. All set for your stove, dish rack, or a gift. 

Enjoy!

Tracey