handmade pillows

I thought I would share one of my old projects.  I made these pillowcases shortly after getting my sewing machine last year.  I wanted to test it out with a relatively easy shape, but added some difficulty with the appliques that I created and sewed on around the edges. I wish I had more pictures of the process to make this post more of a tutorial. 
On the pillows with appliques, I had to do all the applique work before sewing the actually pillow pieces together.  On this birds-on-telephone-wire pillow, I started by hand sewing or embroidering the telephone lines.  On the wrong side of the front piece of fabric I drew straight lines across the pillow and embroidered across those lines using the stem stitch, a basic embroidery technique. 
After that I created all the little bird appliques using felt.  I strengthened the felt with interfacing on each piece.  Then I glued the birds in place with fabric glue.  Once the glue dried, I used my sewing machine to sew along the edges of each applique. They're not coming off, to say the least.
 To finalize the pillow, I sewed the front piece to the back pieces.  This has an envelope pocket.
 These chess-piece/silhouette pillows were very simple to make since I didn't make any appliques for them.  They were so easy, I made two!
 They also were made with an envelope closure.
This octopus pillow used the same technique as the bird pillow. I just had to carefully cut out the eyes after attaching the interfacing and before gluing and sewing the the pillow.  I chose a more complementary/visible thread to border this one. 
Surprise, surprise...I made this one an envelope pocket as well.  I just orientated it differently.  Not necessarily on purpose. 
Hopefully, I will get these guys on Etsy sometime soon.  I just want to get more of an arsenal of goods before I list anything.

No comments:

Post a Comment