Valentine's Day Crafts for Tweens: Heart Pillows & Sachets

Valentine's Day is a great inspiration for shaking off the cold and pulling out some hot shades of red to craft Valentine's decorations, homemade cards, and handmade gifts. While teens may be over the peel and stick foam heart stickers or the Valentine's handprint wreaths, they enjoy being creative, completing more long-term projects and especially trying out new mediums of crafts materials.

Children this age are often interested in sewing and have the skills needed to hand-sew a heart shaped pillow or sachet.

If this is the tweens first sewing experience it may be best to start with a small heart shaped pillow or sachet.

Materials:
Scrap fabric or felt in reds, white and pinks
Needles and thread
Cotton pillow stuffing
A heart stencil or cut out to trace
Marker
Scissors
*Yarn can be used for thread if you are working with felt.

Optional:
Ribbons
Buttons
Dried lavender

Decisions, decisions... Stitches Inside or Out?

Before tweens begin this sewing project, there are decisions to make. Do they want the stitches to be inside? If so, they will need to remember to sew the fabric inside out and push through with only a few stitches left.

Especially if you're using solid colored felt, such as red felt with white thread or vice versa, it can look really cute and may be easier for some beginning sewers to make the stitches on the outside. This is a great way to practice consistent sized stitches and spaces.

*While most embellishments can be added afterwards, if kids want to add the smiling face buttons, these need to be sewn onto the front piece of the pillow before sewing the front and back together.

Embellish, embellish!

Once the frame is complete but before the stuffing (and/or dried lavender are added) kids can add embellishments to their heart pillow or sachet.

Here a few ideas from tweens:

Add a ribbon loop for hanging the sachet.

Add short ribbon fringe all around the edges.

Add buttons either around the edge or sewn into a smiling face pattern.*

These small heart pillows and sachets can be used in many ways as decorations or handmade gifts.

Two heart sachets can be connected at the "dip" by a long ribbon, which allows them to drape over a knob.

Small heart sachets can be tucked into a grapevine wreath for a country classic Valentine's Day look.

Sachets with dried lavender can be hung in closets or placed in drawers.

Tweens are so creative I've even seen them add ribbons and tie their little pillows onto purse handles or belt loops to add some Valentine's Day bling to their outfits.