Love, Balloons and Tiny Hearts

I have to tell you the truth. Never before till this year I made anything for Valentine's Day. It's something we celebrate with a bunch of flowers for me and chocolates for everyone, and a nice home cooked dinner, nothing else really. Especially no decorations for the house... never. This year, for some unknown reason to me, I felt different. I felt like creating small lovely things to make this day more special with a splash of pink and red.

I enjoyed so much working on fabric love hearts and the garlands, embroidering little Valentine's tags, making a wall hanging that I am going to show you a bit later in the week and finally sewing the placemats. I think I might keep this tradition going with some extra special additions for the next year.

It feels like I am stepping out of my comfort zone even more now with pairing together all these colours. I am in love with aqua, white and red together. It's such a fresh and catching combination. The design for the mats did not come to my mind right away, it kind off evolved slowly. First was the idea of balloons shaped like little hearts, then funky letters, then the white fabric for the base was chosen, after that fabric for the letters and border. It was a slow but a very pleasant and satisfying process.

A bit of raw edge applique, some free motion machine embroidery, a few letters and of course my all-time-favourite running stitch. A tiny tag to add a bit more love to the mats already full of hearts. For the back of the mats I used plain white cotton. The mats turned out to look quite jolly and airy.

Yet again there was an opportunity to use up even smaller scraps for this project and get more practice with free motion machine embroidery that I really have to work on.

What do you think of the aqua and red colour combination? What colours inspire you at the moment? Have you made any special decorations for Valentine's Day?