Home » How To Make A Fabric Scandinavian Heart

Difficulty level
Beginner
Time to Complete
Evening
Projects
home décor
Seasons
Christmas, Winter
Techniques
sewing
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    • Hello imajqultr, while we don’t offer the tutorial as a PDF download, you can save it for later from your computer. Depending on your computer system configuration, you may be able to print the article to a word document or directly to a PDF file to save for later.

    • What works for me, is I click on the PRINT THIS PAGE icon and then when my print screen comes up, I’m able to select PDF at the bottom of the screen, and then SAVE AS PDF. I have a MAC, so I’m not sure if this works the same with Windows or not.

  • I really have to correct you.
    This is NOT a swedish heart – this i a DANISH heart.
    The very first one was made by the danish author Hans Christian Andersen and it is used at christmas time.

    how you got it to be swedish, I do not know, but this is incorrect. 🙂

    • You are correct that Hans Christian Andersen made the first one. I have only ever heard this called a Swedish Heart. Forgive my ignorance because had I known it was truly a Danish Heart I would have called it that since my husband’s parents immigrated from Denmark to America. I Googled “make a Danish Heart” and got 64,100,000 results and then Googled “make a Swedish Heart” and only got 2,790,000. I am not the first one to make the error, it seems. I sincerely apologize and thank you for educating me. Sincerely, Charlotte Warr Andersen

      • You are welcome. 🙂
        He made it over a hundred years ago, and every christmas, these are everywhere, and as Mathilda wrote, they are traditionally red and white as our flag.

        Yeah, I see your last name is a common danish last name. 🙂

    • Hans Christian Andersen started the tradition – at the HCA museum they have samples from 1850.
      The traditional colours, red and white, are the colours of the Danish flag. All Danish children know how to braid the hearts – make then for Christmas tree ornaments and decorations around the house in December.
      I think that Jenny Dan from MSQC mistakenly called them Swedish – reflecting on the grandmother’s Swedish heritage – and that started the misconception, continuing on Pinterest etc.
      Thank you for the correction.

      • To add even more confusion-I think both are correct since Sweden was formerly Danish, and this quote from Hans Christian Anderson suggests to me we should simply call it a Scandinavian woven heart..my heritage is Swedish by the way and these are a part of Christmas for us as well. “As a political term, Scandinavia was first used by students agitating for pan-Scandinavianism in the 1830s.[7] The popular usage of the term in Sweden, Denmark and Norway as a unifying concept became established in the nineteenth century through poems such as Hans Christian Andersen’s “I am a Scandinavian” of 1839. After a visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism. In a letter describing the poem to a friend, he wrote: “All at once I understood how related the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians are, and with this feeling I wrote the poem immediately after my return: ‘We are one people, we are called Scandinavians!'”

  • Well, I tackled this project and have a few comments. First, you really only need 4″ or 4 1/2″ strip, not 6″. You can just cut the 2″ wide strip 26″, not 28″. For the half circle pattern, add the 1/4″ seam allowance and then trace onto something stiff, like a piece of manila file folder. I was using scrap fabric for this project and found it wasn’t necessary to cut fabric rectangles to then cut the half circle shapes. My fabrics were multi shade of red thin stripe, and white on white snowflakes.

    This will now be sent to my Danish-ancestry friend instead of my Swedish-ancestry friend!

  • I did tackle this project too. I printed the pattern of the half circle and added the quarter inch all around and made a new pattern out of cardstock. I do not think you need the rectangles either. I just traced around my pattern piece with the seam allowances. I did not use satin, but a thicker cotton. I should have made the strips slightly narrower than the 2″ to compensate for the thicker cotton. Next time I will. I also did not need to interface my fabric. I did need the strips to be 6 1/4″ long. I chose to add some twine at the top for the handle and whipped stitched by hand the opening on the top of the heart closed, encasing the twine (on which I tied a knot on the bottom). Finally, I omitted the tassle.

  • I tried more than once to weave this into the checkered pattern with no luck. It’s a beautiful project but I didn’t have success with it. Thank you though!

  • I am playing a gnome at an evening old world Yuletide Village event this year. I used your tutorial to make a Danish heart basket from quilter’s cotton to hide the battery pack to a string of LED lights decorating my walking stick (which is might lighter than carrying a lantern.) I’ve get a lot of compliments on it and questions about it, which I love because it is one more Danish Christmas tradition I get to share with my fellow performers and patrons

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