Friday 15 February 2013

HOot.

This post has been a long time coming. I think that I finished this project almost a year ago, actually. It was definitely still while we were at the apartment, and I'm sure that it was before Derek and I were married. Clearly, it's about time that I posted about it!

I made this pillow years ago, when my older sister Rachel and I were really into quilting. I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I picked out the materials... Apparently I had no understanding of what went well together. But, time has passed, and I have learned a little bit. The pillow itself was a great size, and since I'm hesitant to get rid of things that I can re-purpose (I think that's my mother's emphasis on recycling coming out), I figured I'd just redo the pillow. 


Yeah. The back wasn't much better. 


First, I had to fill it with more stuffing. Either I hadn't put much in to begin with, or it had become very flat in the time since I originally made it. That meant I had to reopen one of the seams, but that in itself wasn't very hard. 

I took my inspiration for the pillow from something I'd seen on StumbleUpon: a pillow with an owl in a tree. It wasn't very difficult for me to sketch out a rough drawing of the image I had in my head onto some tissue paper, and use that as my template for the fabric pieces. 


Of course, since I didn't (and still don't!) have a sewing machine, the majority of the work was done by hand. I felt very pioneer-esque, crafting things by hand. I also felt very sick of sewing by the end of it. 


Most of the material, I actually picked out of my very large scrap bin: old t-shirts, etc. that I no longer wear. But I did pick up the fabric for the actual cover (as opposed to the fabric for the appliques) from our local fabric store. Since I was going with such a light yellow colour, and I didn't want the old pillow to show through, I layered the yellow with a basic black broadcloth - cheapest stuff I could find, since no one would ever be seeing it. For that particular aspect of the pillow, sewing together the cover, I actually did while I was visiting my parents at Christmas (of 2011! I told you it's been a long time!) because I knew that I'd probably go crazy and stick sewing needles in my eyes if I tried to do all that by hand too. I'm not really known for my patience...


In the end, though, there were no sewing related injuries, and I had a very nice owl pillow. I actually did sew the final seam by hand, because that's the only way I know how to close up a pillow. My mom taught me this neat stitch that she does to sew suture stitches on surgery patients that leaves the thread invisible. I have realized since making it that some of the seams are noticeably crooked, so some day when I have my own sewing machine, I'll fix that. But not before then. Because sewing needles. And eyes.


So there is a very, very late project that I've been meaning on posting about for forever. Talk about procrastinating, eh?

1 comment:

  1. Aww but now it doesn't match my quilt ;) Looks really great now!

    ReplyDelete