Day 163: Sewing Envelope Pillow

Time: Just over an hour
Listening to: My Week With Marilyn Soundtrack

So I've had my little Oregon embroidery done for a couple weeks now and finally got around to making it into a pillow!

I've made a couple pillows now so I thought I'd give you a little step by step to show how to make an envelope pillow.

First off, you need to measure your pillow form. I've happened to always use square pillows so the long/short side doesn't really matter. Pick the longest side (or your favorite square side) and wrap your measuring tape around it--overlapping 4 inches. Add 3 inches to that. With my square pillow, it ended up that the length would be 30 inches.

The tricky part for my length is that my embroidery piece was not 30 inches long. I measured my little map piece and it was 11 inches. 30-11=19. I wanted my map to be in the center of my pillow so I needed two pieces to sew on each side of my map of 9.5 inches.

Whew!

Ok, now on to your width. Measure the length and add 3-4 inches to that. My width (being a square and all) ended up being roughly 15 inches.

Here is the picture of my map piece sewed together with my two 9.5 inches.

As you can see, my pillow had one more tricky part...
















My map fabric piece was only about 11 inches high. And I needed it to be 15 inches! So, I cut two pieces of 30x4...and sewed that to the top and the bottom.

So now my pillow cover is finally the size that it should be at. Now you need to finish the short edges. Fold your fabric over twice and sew down the middle. I left about 1/4 seam allowance but I wasn't too picky.

Ok, now comes the fun part!

With the pertty side up, place your pillow in the middle.

Fold the sewn sides over the pillow so that they overlap by a couple inches.Then pin the two overlapped fabric pieces to secure it.

On the loose sides, draw a line to show you where you want to sew. This seems like you will be closing up your pillow, but you won't! The overlapped parts won't be sewn shut and those act as the envelope part of the pillow.

Once you mark where you want to sew, pull your pillow out and sew two straight lines across the top and bottom--following your lines.

Once you finish your sewing, trim your excess off and you should have a pillow case much closer to the size of your pillow. Here is what mine looked like:

Now flip it inside out and insert your pillow!! Here is my finished back:

Once you make a couple of them, they are so easy! Enjoy!

Day 150: Embroidery (cleanup)

Time: A couple hours
Listening to: Murder She Wrote

My buddy ol' pal, Bethany, came over last night to craft with me. I'd had this embroidery done for a while now but had to finish it. I usually use brown paper to finish off the back but this time I tried a new technique of using cloth to kind of wrap it up nicely.

Here is a pretty not so exciting picture of it:

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

Day 140: Oregon Embroidery

Time: One hour
Listening to: Murder She Wrote

I finally finished my map! Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with it...

Day 138: Embriodery of Oregon

Time:  A couple hours
Listening to: Murder She Wrote (should we just start assuming this??)

Still working on my map but I'm getting so close!

Day 137: Embroidery

Time: Hours
Listening to: Murder She Wrote, of course!

I swear that Murder She Wrote is the best TV show to watch while embroidering. I stayed up way too late last night watching show after show on Netflix. The good news is that I made some great progress on my map embroidery!

Day 133: Embroidery

Time: Hour and a half ish
Listening to: Silence

I started working on a new embroidery. My hubby is going to grad school in Oregon this fall for Geography so what better way to embrace my future by embroidering a map of Oregon in relation to the rest of the United States?!

Here is the start:

And miles and miles to go....

Day 131: Self Portrait Embroidery

Time: 2+ hours
Listening to: Murder She Wrote

I worked on a new embroidery of my husband and I. Here's the finished project:

Day 67: Embroidery

We finished watching Mad Men and I finished another flamingo! Not quite picture worthy yet, but it will be revealed soon enough!

Day 65 and 66: Embroidering and photoshop

Time: Hours
Listening to: Mad Men

So Saturday night (Sunday morning) my husband and I decided to stay up really late and watch a gazillion episodes of Mad Men. I was wide awake because I was embroidering and loving it. Here is my lovely flamingo. 

I've also been busy making my friend Molly's invitations and RSVP cards for her upcoming wedding. The flamingo may or may not be apart of them! More to come later!

Day 47: Cat Embroidery

I worked on a little Valentine's Day present for my husband (I know, I know...a little late) this evening but instead of showing that I'll reveal a previous secret project! Here is a little kitty I worked on for my friend!

 

I got the patterns free from Speckless!  They are just so cute, aren't they?! It was hard to pick only one kitty to embroider.

This is my third post about cats. This is ironic because I don't even like cats. Well...I really like them in theory....does that count?

Secret Project Revealed: Cat Embroidery

I made this little cat embroidery for my brother in law a couple weeks ago! He loves cats so why not a cat embroidery?!

Day 32 and Day 33: Secret project!

Time: Two hours total
Listening to: Mad Men (Day 32), Fleet Foxes (Day 33)

I am working on a birthday present for a lovely friend that I can't wait to give her!!!!!

In the meanwhile, here is a picture of one of my previous secret projects. I sent it to my friend, Molly, to tell her I think she is pretty sweet! Sweet...get it?

My sweet embroidery