{Frilly, Fluffy, Handmade Pillows}

Being the semi-crafty person that I am, I knew I wanted to make some pillows for the house.  I wanted to utilize some of the left over fabric from my headboard and spice up the bed with some other textures and fabrics.  As per usual, browsing through some blogs, I came across a pillow that I really wanted to attempt to make.  So when my mom came down this weekend and brought her sewing machine, I knew that was our project for the weekend.  

We started off on our search for fabrics, and let me tell you, I am a particular person.  Not that it is a bad quality, but when I have an idea of what I want, I'm not going to just buy anything.  We went to 4 different stores before I found a few things that I liked.  I ended up going with another pattern for my larger pillows in the bedroom wall blue, two different yellow hues, and a silky black fabric.  We were a little worried about the blue. After spending about 30 minutes discussing what color the wall was, we took it home and it is almost perfect.  We also had to find pillows, and luckily I could utilize some of the ones I had at home.  Once we had all our materials, we were set to sew.

I haven't quite mastered the art of a sewing machine, and although it seems fairly easy, I didn't want to risk the fabric.  My poor mom sewed seven pillows in the time I was working on the 'frilly' stuff for one.

Here is the blog that I found the steps to make these fabric flowers.  Although it was very helpful for the majority of the steps, I felt like she was a little vague in some areas.  Using her steps, here are some of my helpful hints if you want to make the flowers and for putting them on the pillow.

  Here is a picture of my first fabric flower that I made.

I folded my material like she said, but as you progress, I made the material fold into half to make the sewing easier at the bottom.

Be sure to have these two items around.  The thread I used was pretty thick, so the threader helped a TON - as you can see - I broke 2 of them.  I also pricked myself about 100 times before I figured out I should use a thimble.

I would continue to loosely fold and sew into the middle slightly.  It is too hard to go through all that fabric, so I would just make sure it was secure.  I also took my needle and worked backward from where I folded the material.  This allows the string to over lap and I felt it held my material together better.  As you use more material, I allowed more and more to show.  By the end, I was using the strip of fabric with out a fold.  Once I ran out of the material, I took the left over string and tied it with another string I placed on the flower just for the tie.

Here is the part that I had to just wing.  I wanted to secure them all to the pillow case, but was not sure the best way to do it.  After giving it some thought, my mom and I just decided that a simple thread and needle would do the trick.  The flowers are pretty heavy and they have a fairly thick bottom, so you want to make sure to use that same strong thread.  I took out the pillow and sewed 4 different points through the center of the flower and back through the pillowcase.  I used one long thread to make the holds stronger, instead of 4 different smaller strings.  

I also made sure to lay them all out and mark the points on the pillow case before I began to sew them on.  It takes a while, but totally worth the end result!

Here is my finished pillow that took me two days to make.  :o)

I also decided to pull all the pillows together by using all the different fabrics on a separate pillow. The lighter yellow was actually an accident.  We had used all the slightly darker yellow and went back to the store with out looking to see which one it was.  We bought this one thinking it was the same, but it was actually a shade lighter.  It actually turned out great.  I love the slight difference in color, and it makes the yellow flower on this pillow pop.  

Here is a picture of all my pillows on the bed.  I still think I need to add one more to the front.  I'm thinking about bringing the blue to the front as well.  Thoughts?

Happy sewing!!  B