Looking to add a handmade touch to your Valentine’s Day? There are lots of free knitting and crochet patterns for making hearts for your sweetheart, and today, we’ll not only show you a quick & easy batt project to whip up for the occasion, we’ll also share some of our favorite patterns and a few fun ideas for decorating with handspun hearts. Let’s get started!
Supplies:
- A Strauch Drum Carder (we used a Strauch Petite)
- 1/2 oz each of white and red fiber
- Knitting needles or crochet hook (size will vary based on pattern chosen and the weight of the resulting yarn)
- WPI Gauge
- Darning Needle
Start by dividing your white and red fiber in half; you will be processing both colors at the same time, with the white fiber on one side and the red fiber on the opposite side like so:
Once you have processed half of both fiber colors, flip the placement of colors as you feed the remaining fiber through your drum carder.
This will ensure that you have a little bit of each color in your yarn as you spin with it.
Next, remove your batt and get ready to spin! We opted to spin a thick-and-thin single ply yarn because our chosen pattern called for the yarn to be held double. Our yarn was approximately 7 WPI when held double, or bulky weight. We used a size J/6.00mm crochet hook to whip up these simple crocheted hearts using this free crochet pattern and tutorial from Vickie Howell:
Here are a few more fun, free patterns for making hearts:
- Hearts by Amanda Berry (knitting)
- Hearts in a Hurry by Frankie Brown (knitting)
- Hearts by Anna Hrachovec (knitting)
- Valentine’s Day Hearts by Rachel Counts (crochet)
- Hearts by Annemarie Benthem (crochet)
- Boho Hearts by Sandra Paul (crochet)
Now that you have lots of handmade hearts, it’s time to decide what to do with them! Here are a few ideas:
- Attach to lapels or backpacks with safety pins.
- Use a few drops of fabric glue to add to a Valentine’s card.
- String together to make an eye-catching garland (shown above).
- Use twine, ribbon, or yarn to hang up as ornaments.
We hope you have a sweet Valentine’s Day celebration, and would love to see your handspun hearts, too. Share them with us on Instagram and don’t forget to tag your post with #strauchfiber!
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