Pillow Project

Last week I had a blissful afternoon when both boys napped at the same time. It doesn't happen often, and I decided to take full advantage of it, diving into a project I've been thinking about for months. While we were in Maine over the summer, I bought a t-shirt with a neat print on the front that I wanted to make into a pillow for Colter. I picked up a pillow form at a craft store at one point, and some fabric for the back somewhere along the way. Then I shoved it all in a box and didn't do a thing with it. Until that afternoon last week.

An afternoon with both boys napping is a good time for a project because I can actually pull out my sewing machine and ironing board, but it is not a time for futzing around with the details, nor apparently for taking pictures along the way. It is evidently a time for winging it, a time for mental math of questionable accuracy, and a mad dash for the finish line before anyone (myself included) starts crying.

So here's the pillow:

The process went something like this:

• I ironed some fusible interfacing to the t-shirt to make it a bit stiffer and less stretchy, then I cut it to size.
• I cut two strips of my fabric and sewed them on either side. This is where my dubious math comes in; I should have made them wider because the fit is a little tight end-to-end and the borders ended up not being even all the way around.
• Then I sewed a piece across the bottom to fold up over the back, and hemmed the edge. I did the same thing at the top.
• After figuring out how much overlap they needed, I pinned them in place, right sides facing, and sewed up the sides, making a kind of "envelope" for the pillow to fit in.

There you have it. The least-helpful guide to making a pillow case ever.

I considered taking a bit of the stuffing out so it isn't so tight, but Colter plays hard with his pillows so he'll probably beat the fluff out of it.