Pillows

Well, it's been another while. I guess it is fair to say that I am just not super consistent about getting these posts up. To be honest I haven't even been crafting very much lately! It has been quite busy around our little home with school and pregnancy and such. I was just going through my pictures and found a simple project that I did for a friend though....recovering pillows.

She bought these pillows at a thrift store. If you are re-covering pillows, it doesn't matter if they match, as long as they are about the same size. She also picked up some normal-sized pillow cases to use as the covers. 

The pillow cases were envelope pillow cases. I first laid out one pillow case and cut up the sides of the smaller flap.

I next cut the bottom off and up the sides. I was cutting through both layers of the pillow case.

I then cut straight across to make two squares just bigger than the size of the pillow.

The fabric squares were then placed right-sides-in, pinned and sewn along three full sides and a few inches in both sides of the top.

All four corners were then cut.

The cover was then turned right-side-out and the pillow was placed inside.

With the pillow inside, the raw edges were tucked in and pinned. 

This edge was then sewn. You can do this by hand to give a good, clean look, but I wanted thee fast way out, so I did it with my machine. It gives a little bit of an edge that sticks out, but for these, I thought it turned out fine. 

The same process was repeated with the second pillow! 

~K.A.N.

Owl Pillow

A couple of months ago I was in a cute little shop and spotted an adorable owl pillow for sale. I looked at the price tag....$42! Wow, I knew I could make one like it so I grabbed a quick picture with my phone and decided to try my hand at this owl and I just love how it turned out! 

This was my first shot at applique, so it's far from perfect, but I was excited that it worked. I first drew a pattern for the body, wings, tummy, nose and eye pieces making sure they all fit together nicely.

(Sorry it's hard to see)

I then chose the fabric I was going to use for each part of the owl and cut out the pieces. I did four wing pieces, two for each side to make them a little thicker. The main body had two pieces, two of each of the eye pieces, one tummy and one nose. I then laid all the pieces together to make sure it was the look I wanted.

It was just perfect, so I continued. I started with the tummy onto the front piece of the body. I used a zig-zag stitch all the way around. I then pinned all the circles for the eyes and did a ziz-zag stitch aroung all of those. Last was the nose. 

With that done, I did a ziz-zag stitch around the outside of the wings, connecting the two wing pieces together. 

With all the applique done, the wings were placed and pinned in the right spots and the front and back pieces of the body were pinned right side in. I sewed it together, leaving a small opening at the bottom to turn it right side out. This was done and the owl was stuffed using the same hole. I hand-stitched the hole shut to finish the owl pillow!

~K.A.N.