Felt Hearts

These sweet little felt hearts are a fun addition for your holiday or everyday decorating. Learn how to make these easy and inexpensive felt hearts in just a few minutes.

I love making crafts out of felt and these felt hearts are no exception. Felt is so forgiving to work with, comes in lots of colors and is super inexpensive. What’s not to like? With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, I wanted to make a quick and simple heart craft that is easily recreated by anyone.

You don’t need any fancy tools to make these adorable felt hearts, they take only a few supplies to make. You may even have the supplies on hand, you could start making these hearts today!

When it comes to the felt I used, I just got the normal acrylic craft felt at the hobby store. I would recommend paying the little bit extra to get the premium felt if it is available in the color you want. However, it is not necessary. The orange and pink hearts are made from the thicker premium felt while the other colors are from the regular kind.

While you may not be able to tell a difference in the pictures, they just feel better and more durable to me. To finish off each felt heart, I found some matching embroidery thread to stitch the hearts around the edges.

There are lots of ways to decorate with these hearts. You can literally just toss them in a bowl for fillers, or lay them out around for pops of color. Speaking of color, you can make these hearts in any color you want! I chose these pastels because they go with my mantel decor. I will show you at the bottom of the post how I used the felt hearts in my decorating.

Watch the quick video

Don’t want to read all the instructions? I have included a video in this post showing you how to make these felt hearts. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. Also, if you ever want to slow down the video, just click on the three dots in the lower right hand corner of the video and you can change the playback speed. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading.

Supplies to make felt hearts

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

• Felt sheets in colors of your choice – I used the colors baby pink, orange, yellow, minty and lilac, all from Hobby Lobby.
• Matching embroidery thread – I already had these on hand
• Large eye embroidery needle
• Scissors
• Twine
• Poly-fil
• Jute twine (optional)
• Heart Template (get below)

Print out the felt heart template

The first step is to print out the felt hearts template onto cardstock. When you are printing, make sure you print this pattern at 100% to make sure the size is correct. Every printer is different so just make sure your settings are not set to ‘fit to page‘ or that the box is not checked letting your printer make changes. These hearts are 3″ in size. There are several hearts on the page, but you only need to cut out one, you can use it over repeatedly. You can use the other heart templates for another project. 🙂

• Felt Heart Template

How to make felt hearts

Using the heart template you just cut out, trace it onto a piece of felt. You will need to trace two hearts to make one stuffed felt heart. You can trace 12 hearts on one sheet, resulting in six felt hearts if you want to make them all out of the same color. I used a fine marker to trace the heart and then cut it out right inside the line so that the outline didn’t show up on the finished heart.

You can poke the holes into the felt as you hand stitch the two hearts together if you want, but I found it easier to poke the holes in the top heart ahead of time. This allowed the stitches to be more uniform around the heart and made the stitching go along easier. Take your embroidery needle and poke holes starting at the center of the heart and follow around keeping them evenly spaced out. The thicker felt can be a little trickier to poke through at times. If you just wiggle the needle around a bit, it eventually pokes through.

Measure a piece of embroidery thread so that it circles the heart completely two times.

How to sew a felt heart

Cut off the thread and tie a double knot at the end. Thread the needle and coming from the back, insert the needle into the felt heart in the dot right below the top center.

Pull the thread tight until the knot nestles against the felt. Lay this heart on top of the other heart and start stitching them together using the holes you poked earlier. 

When you are coming from the back, I found it easier to poke through the front hole first to make a hole in the second heart underneath so you know exactly where to insert the needle on the backside.

Continue around the hearts, using a running stitch to sew them together.

When you reach the top curve of the other side, stop sewing so you can fill the heart with stuffing.

Stuff the felt hearts

Open the partially sewn felt heart and add some Poly-fil stuffing inside. You don’t need a lot, maybe about a handful. Try not to overstuff the hearts or it will be hard to sew them closed. Pinch the two open edges together and continue stitching the felt heart shut.

When you reach the beginning point, go down through the same hole and come through to the back of the heart. You can be done at this point if you like this look and tie off the thread. I decided to continue stitching so that the stitching resembles a backstitch like what you would get with a sewing machine. I think this makes the heart look more finished with a completely sewn look.

Coming from the backside, insert your needle into the first hole and come out the other side. You will essentially now be sewing the unsewn portions using all the same holes you previously poked.

Continue around the felt heart until you get to the beginning again.

Tie off the thread

Tie a knot on the thread close to the heart. To bury the end of the thread, insert the needle into the same hole again and come out in the middle of the heart. Pull the end of the thread tight and cut off the extra length outside of the heart.

Make as many felt hearts as your heart desires. 😉 Each heart takes about 20-25 minutes to make in completion, so you can whip out quite a few in an afternoon. Turn on some music or a TV show to watch at the same time to make the time fly by. I made three hearts of each color to use in a garland.

How to make a felt heart garland

Making a felt heart garland was super easy. I just cut a long piece of thin twine to fit across my mantel with some extra length on each side. Using my large eye embroidery needle, I threaded the twine through the top curves of each hearts. Make sure to insert the needle between the two layers of felt and come out the same way on the other side instead of pushing through the felt.

This way you can easily slide the hearts along the twine to get them into the position you want them to be.

I repeated the colors in a pattern across the whole length of the twine and tied the twine to some command hooks on the sides of the mantel. Easy peasy! How cute is this garland!?

Here are some more heart crafts you may enjoy!

• Embroidered Heart Bunting
• Heart Shaped Pillow
• How to Sew a Heart
• Feather Heart Wreath
• Simple Heart Weaving Wall Hanging

You can see more of the mantel in my next post where I am sharing another fun heart wall hanging project. This one turned out really cool! Chat soon friends!