Ta Dah! Valentines Part 2

As I said the other day, I finished my Valentine's project.

First, I want to give a piece of advice to anyone who is thinking of making a massive amount of gifts for a large group like a Bible Study or Women's Group.  DO NOT WAIT until the night before to assemble.  I was planning to making little heart sachets for each of the women in our group.  We have anywhere from 20-30 women.  So, i planned on making 25 (this is a mistake took, but I'll get to that in a minute).  It only took me approximately 10-15 minutes to make each side of the hearts. It took a little longer to assemble all the pieces together.  Then again, I was assembling 50 hearts together.   I was up very late the night before finishing the assembly.

It was totally worth it though.  I think everyone really liked it.  My other mistake was not making enough.  The lesson learned here is if you're part of a group that grows and shrinks, don't make enough for the 'average' number that shows up.  Sure as the sky is blue, the night you plan something special, twice as many people will show.  If I ever do this again, I will be making enough for our entire group size (which is 35 at the moment by the way) plus 5. 

I know some of you have wanted info on the patterns.  I don't have step-by-step instructions to give you.  I used 2 main patterns for the hearts.  As I was hooking along and making them larger, smaller, wider, etc. I modified the patterns.  The modifications aren't enough that I can claim it as a whole new pattern. 

I used three but these two below are the main inspiration for my projects.

• Heart Pins -- you can find it in two places
• http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/heart-pin-2
• http://web.archive.org/web/20071024013022/http://www.heartmadeblessings.org/patterns/heartpin.asp
• Love Hearts -- you can find this one in two places also.
• http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/love-hearts-2
• http://www.planetjune.com/blog/free-crochet-patterns/love-hearts/

I used this pattern to make two sides a front and back like this purple one - Heart Pin pattern

I also made some front and back versions of the Love Hearts like these ones

Both patterns were really easy.  I personally liked the Love Hearts pattern best but the Heart Pin pattern worked up the quickest.  In the end, I ended up making more using the Heart Pin pattern.

If you look closely at this picture, there are some pretty ideas for borders.  The pattern for Bella's Sweet Hearts made really beautiful hearts, but they were too big.  I think they were too big  because of the hook, yarn and my guage.  Anyway, I tried modifying the pattern to make smaller hearts but i couldn't quite make it work.  They looked like sloppy hearts so I scrapped the idea.  However, I did still use something from Bella's site.  If you look closely at the pic below, you can see different patterns/styles for the borders.  I used that pic as a way to make some different patterned borders of the hearts as I assembled them. 

The assembly part was easy but more time consuming.  Basically I used either a SC or SL ST to assemble the front and back pieces together.  Once I was 3/4 of the way around the heart I would stuff it with fiber-fill and add a few drops of Rosewood Essential Oil.  I love the smell of this oil.  It has a very beautiful flower smell.  It makes a whole room smell very nice.  I used about 6-8 drops in each sachet.

So, that is the story of the sachets.   Have fun making some for yourself.  It really is worth it to make something for someone else.  I have really enjoyed this project.