Sunday, October 27, 2013

Making Pillows

Thought tonight would be a good time to show you how I made my little pillows.  They end up 12" x 16".

The patterns come from The Quilt Company in Pennsylvania and are available at many quilt shops.  They make some very nice patterns and I especially like these.

I didn't follow the pattern completely and the reason is that I wanted to save the step of quilting it.

First of all I cut a piece of cotton that will be used for background just a smidge larger than the pattern calls for because sometimes the quilting will make your project a little smaller.    Using my frixion pen, I traced the greenery pattern onto it.

Second, I cut a piece of very thin cotton (something you wondered why you bought it and is not good enough to put into a quilt).  I cut it about 14" x 18".  On top of that I put a piece of thin batting about the same size.  Then I centered the background piece on top.

These 3 pieces can be sprayed with 505 or something of that nature to keep the sandwich together, or, you can baste around the area to be embroidered.

I used Sulky 12 wt. thread and starting at one end, I stitched to the first branch, then up that branch and back down right on top of my first row of stitching.  Then I went along the main branch to the next branch.  If there were branches coming off, I would go up the little branch, back to where I veered off, then to the end of the branch and back to the main branch, always sewing right on top of the previous stitching.  If I went off, I didn't worry - it's a tree branch and they can go any which way.  When I got to the end of the main branch, I turned around and did a second row of stitching along that main branch.  If I made an error, I just left a tail of thread I could weave in and started again.  When I was all finished, I pulled the thread ends to the back and tied them off. 

After the branch was sewn, I drew a line around it, the size the fabric was supposed to be in the first place.  Remember, I cut this piece larger in case sewing the branches made this piece smaller.

Borders are cut to a specific size as per the pattern.  First the small red border.  I used the line I drew to simulate the edge of the background fabric.

 Next comes the outer border, which is dark green on this one. 
 There are a couple of ways to finish the pillow but I just followed the instructions to have one piece fold over the other.  It worked just fine for me. 
Before turning the pillow right side out, I did a zig-zag stitch all around the raw edges, clipped the corners and turned.  
 
Here is one of the pillows finished.  Really cute!

I enjoyed making mine and hope you will too.

Hope everyone has had a nice week-end and may your bobbins always be full!

Cheers

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