Spring Pillows: The Bird Pillow Tutorial

I really like these bird pillows from Pottery Barn. Unfortunately, the price tag is a little out of my comfort zone. Time to put my newly acquired applique skills to good use. Hopefully, the following tutorial will make sense, but I'll be happy to answer questions or elaborate on any of the steps that are a little too vague.

Tools and Bits for 1 Pillow

• A pillow blank - mine was 12"x12" but you can scale the design to whatever size you like. It doesn't even have to be square.
• fabric for the pillow cover based on the size of your pillow insert (see below)
  
• double sided fusible web
• colorful scrap fabric
• thread
• yarn
• sewing machine
• iron
• fabric scissors, pencil, pins, needles, and (if you sew anything like me) a seam ripper.

What You Do
Cut out your pillow case pieces. I like the rather elegant simplicity of envelope covers. There are many people out there who have done a much better job than I can of explaining how to make this style of pillow case. Apartment Therapy has an easy to follow set of instructions for how to do this. When you get to the part about sewing on the doily (that would be step 2), we're going to do some applique instead.

Click on the plant and bird templates and print them. (For the record, I drew these freehand, inspired by the PB design. I hereby turn them loose on the creative world). If you're working with a 12"x12" pillow, printing the designs so they fill an 8.5"x11" piece of paper works out just great. You may need to scale the images larger or smaller, depending on your needs. I'm going to assume you know how to do this, but if not, let me know.

Trace the pattern for the plant on the web side of your fusible web (I used Steam-a-seam sticky back fusible web from Jo-ann's). Go ahead and roughly trim around the design. You can use these pieces in a minute to create the contrasting leaf colors.

Peel the paper off the sticky side of the web and place it onto the wrong side of your main plant fabric. Cut the fabric and the web following the traced pattern lines. You'll easily be able to see the pencil lines when you're working with light colored fabric, but I had trouble seeing them on dark fabric. A Sharpie or a white fabric pencil might come in handy here.

Place your plant piece web side down onto your pillowcase cover and follow the directions for heat-setting the design. Pretty simple, no? You're going to do this same process for the lighter green inside the leaves, and for all the parts of the bird. It actually goes pretty quick.

This is a fun project because you choose whatever fabrics are available to you to create the piece. You can also add as many or as few details as you like. Don't feel that you have to do all the layers and details if you don't want to. For example, in the finished pillow, I used the buttonhole stitch on my sewing machine to do the brown stems and the white lines in the tail and wings. You could choose to applique these pieces with interesting fabrics. You could decide to keep it simple and not bother with this at all. Do what works best for you.

When all your appliques are fused in place, you need to stitch them down to make sure that edges don't get caught and peal off. I learned this trick from the lovely and talented Rana who makes the most amazing quilts with incredible machine embroidery. Her machine has a decorative stitch that looks like a T. My machine has a stitch that looks like a T. Basically, you're looking for a setting that will outline your shape and periodically throw a stitch onto the applique to hold it in place. Clear as mud? Excellent. Perhaps pictures will help.

Here is the front and back of my pillowcase. I've gone around all the applique pieces, including the various layers, with this decorative stitch. If your machine doesn't do "funny" stitches, I'm willing to bet that a zig-zag or even straight stitch will work just fine for our purpose. Start by going around all the outside pieces first and work your way in. This way, your stitches layer if they should overlap. Feel free to change the color of your thread to match the piece you are outlining. I used green, yellow and two shades of blue on my piece. Your thread can match exactly or not match at all. The PB pillows use a white thread for tracing the birds. That looks pretty sharp too.

Once all the pieces were stitched down, I used the buttonhole stitch to create the lines in the tail and the stems. Depending on how your attention span runs, you can get very creative here or you can keep it simple and be done with it. If you chose to applique these pieces, you might skip this step entirely.

Finally, I took some red yarn and did a series of french knots to make berries. At some point, I'll dig out some black yarn to give the bird an eye using the same technique. Don't want to try the french knot? Dig out some red beads and sew them on instead.

When you are satisfied with your design, finish sewing your pillowcase together and stuff it with your pillow insert. Voila! Easy pillow revamp for spring! Got questions? Please leave them in the comments so others can benefit. If you make one of these, I'd love to see it!

New pillows for spring

I love these bird pillows from The Barn. I also like the style of these covers. I'm less fond of the $70 price tag for two of them.

$70? For two pillows? Really?

So I whipped these up yesterday using pillows already on my couch and scrap fabric. While I get to work on the tutorial for the bird pillow, you get started on your very own denim pillow.

There are already some great tutorials for making envelope pillow covers. This one from Majestic Blog does a great job of explaining and has lots of photos. I used the same basic concept for my long pillow, adding buttons for decoration and to help keep it closed. Husband put holes in a pair of nearly new jeans that were beyond my ability to repair. I'm glad I found a use for all that leftover denim.

Tune in tomorrow for the bird pillow tutorial. It's slightly more involved than the denim, but not by much.

Practice Quilts for Dolls

In the continuing spirit of my current quilting obsession, I stitched up these doll size quilts. Not only does this use up those scraps of fabric that I just can't part with, but I get to try out some new blocks and techniques and I'm ahead by two on this year's gifts. That never happens.

It's March? What?

How is it possible that it's already March? Time flies when you're having a good time. With one notable exception involving a falling girl, lots of blood, and a fat lip, February was a good time.

There have been tons of projects completed, for which I have promised photos and tutorials. Yeah, it's still on my list but as friends and family will tell you, The List is the length of a bible by now.

Today, I'll share a quick project since the pattern came from Martha. For the Superbowl, I made myself a Steelers hat. Yes, I'm aware that the Steelers didn't make the Superbowl this year, but they would have if a certain Alge Crumpler hadn't injured our Troy in the first game of the season. Stupid Alge Crumpler.

Anyway, I had these baby socks that no longer fit Buttercup. They had little Steeler's logos on them, so I disassembled the socks, grabbed some scrap fleece from Christmas projects, and made myself this nifty Steelers hat. I followed Martha's instructions for the Jester style hat, but instead of pompoms at the ends, I went for longish tassles. I'm ready for September 9! Bring on the 2010 football season!

Ok, that sounds a little strange to me too, but it helps when you have a player you like to watch (have you seen Troy play?) and an understanding of the game. I know more about football now than I ever thought possible. Scary.