{Tutorial}: Heart-shaped Pony Holder

I'm not one to get all into holidays, especially not Valentine's Day. But I figured I would have a little fun with it for my daughter this year.

I made this tutorial mostly for embroidery machines, but you can still do this if you don't have an embroidery machine. You will just have to stitch out the heart on your sewing machine.
Let's commence!

You will need:
-a couple of felt scraps about 2-3 inches square
-piece of elastic 2-3 inches long
-coordinating eyelet
-eyelet punch/eyelet attaching tool

I am using a Brother SE-400, so you may have to hunt around a bit to locate similar designs on your machine.


Hoop a piece of tear-away stabilizer into your hoop.


Select the "frames" options on your screen.


Locate the heart frame and select it.


Select a decorative stitch. I chose a dotted scallop stitch.


Scale your heart down to the smallest size and position it in the corner of your hoop. Place a piece of felt on top and underneath the stabilizer, making sure they match up. Trace your design to make sure it will fit on your felt.




Stitch out your design. This shouldn't take long.


Punch the heart out of the stabilizer. Trim close to the stitches and punch a hole in the center with the eyelet punch.




Overlap the ends of your elastic slightly and punch a hole right through both ends.


Place the eyelet through the hole in the felt heart and flip over.


Place the pierced ends of the elastic over the rear end of the eyelet. It will be a tight fit.


Place back onto your eyelet tool and clamp the eyelet shut, making sure the elastic hasn't slipped off and the eyelet has clamped down all the components.


Place on ponytail. You can even make tiny little bracelets from them.

If you're not using an embroidery machine, just sew up a heart on double layers of felt and attach your eyelet and elastic in the same way as above.

I thought it would be fun to use preloaded designs to make in-the-hoop designs with. Not everyone is a digitizer or wants to take the time looking for a design they downloaded who-knows-when.

I hope this was a helpful tutorial.