Sewing is weird for me. It's one of those things that in your head is all "Oh, I can totally do that." It makes logical sense, but then despite the best plans it somehow usually ends up going all wonky at least once or twice. {Let's also be honest in the fact that the last actually made from a piece of cloth project that i embarked on was a Scrunchie when I was a Girl Scout} Luckily, that was not the case with these little projects.
After picking out some of the nursery fabrics at JoAnn's, they had a little sale going on pillow forms. So, I picked up a 16"x16" and a 12"x16". Why not, I thought to myself. Surely I can make a pillow.
And it turns out ladies and gents, that I can make a pillow.
** Disclaimer, I am definitely not a pro, and there are made up/not professional terms thrown around in here quite a bit. Do what I do, roll with it. **
First, I decided to dream up my designs. I needed templates. They make my life hassle-free. Insert my all-time-favorite computer program for this sort of a thing. PowerPoint. It is so versatile! (Of course there are a million programs that you can use for something like this...but PP exists on all the computers I find myself using during the day. If you get my drift.)
I went ahead and made my "Page Design" 17" x 17" so that I would have a little room to play and created rectangles for each pillow size. Within that I started playing with layering smaller rectangles to make up the designs of the pillows.
Sew Easy - hardy har har.
Once you have your blocks, on the crazy, whatever size you made them slides, you can simply copy and paste them over to a normal presentation for easy printing. Huzzah!
Fit what you can to a page, and use two pages on the ones that are too big for one slide. Make sure to add at least 1/4" to each of the shapes to give yourself some wiggle room and a guide to be able to press back, if you are sewing together quilting-ish style, which I was. I made my life easy and created a half way mark on each of them that I would later need to tape together once they were printed, so that they would easily match up. Also, make sure to label them, as it just makes life easier.
Then you print and start project-ing.
Inside of the fabric, with template pinned on.
Annnnnd, because I stink at how-to's that's the last in-progress shot of pillows that I have. Let's move on.
After cutting and pinning and sewing all those pieces of fabric together, I ended up with this happy little guy...
Yay! One pillow almost done.
He still needed a little something so then I added this embroidery...
Soon, he was joined by his happy little friend...
The square pillow just has a layered back so that you can easily remove the insert, and the rectangle guy I decided to make with a little flap of fabric and those ties, because I thought they were cute. I think they may be a little long, so I may go back and shorten them up, but overall I am pleased with them. And to think, they only took about a day of labor, had I really hunkered down and done them all at once (instead I stretched it over two days with plenty of TV watching and marveling at husband's painting abilities thrown in).
I think they really help set the visual tone of what I am going for in the nursery! Though it is definitely more work, I am so glad that I decided to do all of this myself instead of caving to the Noah's Ark gender neutral themes out there in the world.
Next up, a super easy crib skirt, and then...bumpers!
33 weeks, 4 days along
...and I know this is two posts in one day, but I was too excited to show these babies off!
**Also, my deleted post on being a preggo bridesmaid is back!**
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