I am always looking for cute decorations for Valentine's Day, maybe it's just that I love the color red 😊 ! Custom embroidered felt hearts is a fun way to share the love. This is a quick tutorial using My Design Center on THE Dream Machine
Brother sewing machine.

Supplies:

• Felt, tearaway embroidery stabilizer, water soluble topper, embroidery thread, scissors

Machine:

• I am using THE Dream Machine,
  but you can use any Brother machine with My Design Center.

1. Start by going into My Design Center on the Brother Embroidery Machine. Choose the hoop size you plan on using. I am using the 14" x 9 /2" so I can embroider a lot of hearts at the same time.

2. Click on the SHAPE icon.

3. You will find a heart shape on the first page, but if you have the upgrade or THE Dream Machine 2
   click on the icon for additional shapes.

4. On this page, you will find a few different heart shapes, choose your favorite.

5. Alter the size of the heart if you want it larger or smaller.

6. Send the design to embroidery, but before you set the design check the stitches. There are five options. I choose the satin stitch, but there are other fun one's too.

7. I decided to widen the ZIGZAG WIDTH.

8. Save the design if you want to quickly access it later and click SET.

9. Click on ADD and choose a font.

10. Type in your "Valentine Message" and remember you can make the letters large, medium, or small and there are options for capital and lower-case letters.

11. Click on the SIZE icon to resize the text to fit inside of the heart.

12. ROTATE the text and move the shape to the top of the hoop area.

13. You can add additional letters with a different font by clicking ADD.

14. If you don't like something, simply click on DELETE and remove it. Click on the duplicate icon to copy the heart shape and follow the previous steps to add text, resize, and rotate. Have fun with this part and come up with fun messages or put names of friends and family.

15. There is a lot more room in this huge hoop, why not add more hearts. Click in ADD and choose the HEART icon.

16. Move the heart shape to an open area and resize or rotate to fit.

17. Duplicate the heart shape and move them to all the open areas or add more heart designs.

18. Hoop the tearaway stabilizer and place the felt on the top. Use temporary adhesive spray to secure the fabric. Layer a piece of water soluble topper stabilizer on top of the felt, this will help prevent buried stitches. Skip around the embroidery designs to embroider ONLY the letters and words. Check the letters, if there is space in between the stitches, repeat the embroidery and stitch over each letter twice.

19. Remove the hoop and place a piece of red felt onto the backside of the embroidery hoop. You can tape the fabric in place or use a temporary adhesive spray.

20. Embroider the hearts.

21. Tearaway the excess water-soluble stabilizer off the top. Rinse away any stabilizer stuck in between letter or designs.

22. Cut out all the shapes and tearaway the embroidery stabilizer.

That's it! This is such an easy project and these decorations can be used year after year. No worries if you get chocolate on them - throw them in the washer and dryer and they come out looking like new! Be sure to share photos of your hearts using #angelawolf and #brothersews Happy Valentine's Day! Angela