Heart Elbow Patches - Two Ways

This weekend we had three birthday parties to attend!  My adorable niece, Mary celebrated her first birthday Friday night.  Saturday while my husband went to the 49ers game, the kids and I went to two birthday parties without any naps... Fun (exhausting) times! Here are my two cuties at a cowboy and Indian themed party:

 

Anyway I finally had time today after church to work on a craft I've been wanting to share. 

 

When my friend, Danielle showed me these cute elbow patches I knew this was a craft I wanted to try.  A couple weeks ago I bought some sweaters at the Goodwill to try it on.  My Goodwill store buys boxes that Target can't sell so I got several brand new Target sweaters for $5.99 each!  I followed the instructions in the link above and stabbed away until the wool roving was formed into these cute elbow patches. 

 

 I felt like the patches weren't hooked on very well to the sweater so I hand-stitched them on with matching thread.  The patches looked really cute, but here's what I hated about this craft:

1) I stabbed my finger twice until it was bruised and bloody.

2) It took much longer than I expected... maybe an hour of stabbing.

3) You're not supposed to machine wash and dry these because they're wool.

4) The second time I wore the sweater the patch started coming apart. 

I ended up taking them out with a seam ripper and decided to try something simpler. (My two friends who tried this had more success than I did, so maybe I was just doing something wrong.)





I took one of my daughter's cute Target sweaters and decided to add some pink elbow patches to it.  I had lent out my heart shaped cookie cutter so I just hand drew hearts with chalk on a pink piece of felt.

I picked up this sheet of Heat n Bond Ultrahold for around $3 at Michael's. (By the way, I don't ever go to Michael's without at least a 40% off coupon.  They always have them in the ad, online, or on your last receipt.)

I pinned the felt to the Heat and Bond and cut out the heart shapes.

Next just follow the instructions on the Heat and Bond or whatever product you use.  I just peeled off the white paper and ironed the heart onto the sweater. Easy peasy!

You can just leave it like this because the Heat n Bond secures the patch.  But I decided to add some stitches for an extra cuteness factor.  I used embroidery floss.  Each piece of floss has 6 threads,  I separated it in half and used 3 threads.

I'm not an experienced sewer so this was the most challenging part for me, but still very simple.  It probably took me 5 minutes to sew them on while watching playoff football with my husband.

 

Why I love this method:

1) It's so EASY!

2) I can wash the clothing and not have to worry about it getting ruined.

3) I didn't injure myself.

4) The possibilities are endless.  You can use the felt or fabric along with the Heat n Bond to create any kind of applique!