A boy or girl with deft fingers can make the most attractive little valentine favour imaginable in a short time and at very slight expense. It is a double heart of watercolour paper, painted scarlet and with a silk puff of the same colour drawn up at the top, making a bag for bonbons.
Fig. 92
Fig. 93
The heart is perhaps the most difficult part, but a child who has learned in kindergarten to weave with paper will be able to do it without much trouble. Cut from watercolour paper two pieces in the shape shown in Fig. 92. The paper should be doubled and the fold laid against the straight edge at the bottom of the pattern. The size does not matter very much, though if the heart is to hold anything the pieces should measure four inches and a quarter from the doubled edge to the top of the rounded end and two and five-eighths inches across. Rule with pencil a light line across each piece at two and five-eighths inches from the straight end. Five lines are also ruled in the other direction, the first one seven-sixteenths of an inch from one side of each piece of paper and the others the same distance apart (see Fig. 92). Cut along these lines with sharp, strong scissors from the double straight edge to the ruled line near the top of each piece. The lower part of both pieces will thus be cut into doubled strips. Now take a piece in each hand, rounded end down, and weave the lower strip of the piece in your right hand through the strips in the left-hand piece. As the strips are double, the weaving must be done rather differently than with single strips of paper. The strip with which you are weaving goes around the first strip in the left-hand piece, through the next one, around the next, and so on (see Fig. 93). When it comes to the end it is pushed down a little way and the next strip on the right is woven above it, only that this one passes through the strips that the first one passed around, and around those that the first one passed through. Weave one after another until all six of the strips in the right-hand piece are woven in with those on the left—when it should open to form a heart-shaped bag, as shown in Fig. 94.
Fig. 94
Colour the heart on both sides with vermilion watercolour paint and it will then be ready for the silk top. Cut from scarlet China silk a strip five inches wide by half a yard long. Sew the ends together, hem the top and make a casing for the ribbon drawstring, as described in the directions for the beaded silk bag in chapter V. The lower edge is gathered to fit the inside of the top of the heart and pasted into it on a straight line, running just below the openings, around both sides of the heart. If the paste is not very sticky you may need to take a tiny stitch here and there with scarlet sewing silk, tacking the silk top more securely to the heart. It will then be ready to line with a lace paper doily or some waxed paper, and fill with bonbons.