Easter Pillow Tutorials

Am I the only one that gets a little nutty when Easter lands in March? In my brain, Easter is in April, that way I have proper time to enjoy it. Alas, it is in just a few weeks. Time for the Easter Bunny to get moving on baskets, decor and treats.

If you are looking to add to your Easter holiday decor, I have a couple of pillow tutorials that you may want to check out -- everything from faux chenille to free motion sketching. Running short on time like me? You can use these techniques on gifts for Mothers and Father's Day!

1.) Shabby Chic Eggs

2.) Foundation Pieced Cross Pillow - this also makes a beautiful Baptism/Christening gift!

3.) Faux Chenille  and Reverse Applique - Good or Bad Egg Pillows

4.) Free Motion Sketched - Bunnies at Church Pillow

5.) Crochet Embellished Easter Egg Pillow

Eggcellent Series #5 - Crochet Easter Egg

Thank you so much for joining me this week. I hope you have learned some new techniques and have been inspired to create a pillow. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me any time.

Today I will you show you how to crochet on an applique. However today of all days, because that's how it works, neither of my two sweet kids would nap... so I originally planned to do 3 pillows - 2 bunnies and 1 egg.. and I had time to do the one egg..  Gah! Heartbreaking for me, as I was really excited to bring you this technique. I may revisit it again before Easter with all 3 pillows, photographed beautiful with abundant sunlight. Until then..

Materials Needed:

Plain store bought pillow cover

Scrap fabric for applique

Scrap piece of fusible webbing

Perle cotton - cream and pink

US 7 crochet hook

Embroidery needle

 Step One: (Boo.. I know it's the bunny, but I've been working on these all week and thought I would have all three done..) Anywho.. Draw out your applique shape and make sure it will fit on to your pillow cover.

 Step Two: Iron on the fusible webbing to the wrong side of the applique fabric.

 Step Three: Trace and cut out your applique shape; iron on to the pillow cover front.

 Step Four: Straight stitch the applique down to the cover.

 Step Five: Using the perle cotton and embroidery needle, backstitch around the perimeter of the applique. You want to try to keep your stitch as close to 1/4 as possible. It doesn't have to be exactly 1/4", but try to be consistent with the stitch size. It is important that the crochet hook can slide underneath the stitch, but that the stitch is not so large that it sags off the fabric.

 Step Six: With your hook and perle cotton, single crochet in every stitch around the perimeter. Slipstitch the last stitch to the first.

 Step Seven:  Draw out your design on the applique with an erasable pen.

 Step Eight: Backstitch the design with your perle cotton and then single crochet in each stitch.

And there you are! I love this added dimension to quilting & sewn projects. I think this pillow would look awesome with some crayon tinting too.. Hmmm. Another week of pillow projects? Nah.. ;o)

Have some amazing Easter projects of your own? Come on back tomorrow to share!

What's coming next week?
I'll share the highlights of some my past Easter projects and show you how to do another crochet/sewing tutorial for a ruffled diaper cover - perfect for spring photo shoots..

Eggcellent Series #4 - Bunnies At Church

I can not believe there is only more day left in my pillow series. This week has flown by! I hope that you have been inspired to try a pillow, maybe even one of the tutorials I created. It has been fun and completely fulfilled my crazy desire to create a bunch of Easter pillows.

Today, I present "Bunnies at Church".. isn't it sweet? This is a vintage pattern from Needlecrafter - you can download it by clicking here. There are a ton of awesome vintage patterns to play with.

Materials Needed: 
Fat quarter of white fabric
(2) fat quarters of spring pattern fabric
13" square of fusible batting
Polyfill stuffing
Crayola crayons
hand needle & thread

Step One: Print out the embroidery pattern from the site listed above.
 
Step Two: Grab your erasable pen and trace the pattern on to the white fabric.

 Step Three: Using your white crayon, color in wherever you plan on tinting with crayons.

 Here is my completed piece; this provides as a surface treatment for your tinting.

 Step Four: Color in and have fun! Now colors may slightly change after you free motion and heat set it. If you compare this to my final pillow, you can see that the colors become more subdued.

 Step Five: Now it's time to free motion! Free motion drawing has a very distinctive look, especially when you are doing it with your conventional sewing machine. I love it, I'm crazy about it..but not everyone is. If it is not your cup of tea, feel free to complete this embroidery by hand. If you like it like me, here are some tips:
* lower your feed dogs, if you can't do it manually on your sewing machine then you can tape a business card over them while you work.
*check to see if your machine has special settings for free motion - mine did and I didn't know for about 6 months..doh!
*some lower the stitch to 0, but I don't
* try to be consistent with your speed on the pedal and moving the fabric.

 Step Six: Now it's time to heat set the crayon and remove the pen marks. Place a sheet of copy paper on top of the embroidery and heat set with a very hot iron. You will know you are done when the crayon has left some color on the paper.

 Step Seven: To complete the cover you will need to cut the following pieces and sew as seen below.
Fabric A - (2) 2"x10"
Fabric B - (2) 2"x13"

 Step Eight: This pillow is just decorative and the cover will not be removable. I didn't use a pillow form and simply stuffed it with polyfill. For this reason I wanted to give the cover more stability. I cut a 13" piece of fusible batting and ironed on to the wrong side of the cover.

Step Nine: Cut a 13" square of one of the spring pattern fabrics. Pin the front and back covers right side together. Sew the around the border with a 1/4" seam allowance and leave a 3" open space on the bottom of the pillow. Clip the corners up to the stitching line and pull right side out.

 Step Ten: Gently fill the pillow with polyfill stuffing to your desired puffiness. With a needle and hand quilting thread, sew up the 3" hole with a ladder stitch.

And there she is! I love that you can enjoy hand embroidery patterns in a fraction of the time. I love free motion sketching and use it lot with raw edge applique as well.

Come on back tomorrow for my final pillow tutorial in the series.. crochet on fabric..mmmm, my favorite!

Eggcellent Series #2 - Paper Pieced Cross Pillow

Okay, you got me, this pillow isn't an Easter egg motif..but it is Easter related. I think this pattern would be fabulous as a gift for a Baptism or Christening too.

 Materials needed:
*Travel pillow form
*3 fat quarters
* 1/4 yard of light weight fusible interfacing (optional)
*invisible zipper
*my paper piece pattern - click here to download

Step One: Print out the cross pattern; I gently color the pieces to remind myself which fabrics are to be used. Cut section A from section B (as seen below). You will then paper piece quilt this portion of the pillow. I have a tutorial here if foundation quilting is new territory for you. If you have any questions at all, please email me at allthingsbelle@hotmail.com

Your finished paper pieced section should measure 6" x 9.5" (for this pattern I did not use a 1/4" seam allowance on the border - I cut it down exactly up to the paper edge)

 Step Two: The remainder of the front cover is completed like Courthouse Steps.

Here are the pieces you will need to cut out.
Pink: (2) 1.75" x 9.5" and (2) 1.75" x 8.25"
White: (2) 2" x 11.75" and (2) 2" x 11"
Print: (2) 1.75" x 14.25" and (2) 1.75 x 13"

Step Three: Pin and sew the long pink strips that measure 9.5" as seen below.

Step Four: Pin and sew the remaining shorter strips that measure 8.25" long.

 Step Five: Repeat this process with the final two groups, sewing the longer strips first on the vertical and then the shorter strips on the horizontal. Your final front cover piece should measure 16.5" x 13".

(Optional): Cut a 16.5"x 13"piece of light weight fusible interfacing and iron on to the wrong side of the front cover. Serge or zig zag borders of cover for a professional finish.

 Step Six: Set aside the front cover for now. You will now need to cut the back cover and attach the invisible zipper. For this pillow, I placed my zipper right smack in the middle of the back.

For the back you will need to cut: (2) 13"x 8.5" pieces of fabric.

(Optional) Cut (2) 13" x 8.5" piece of light weight fusible interfacing and iron on to the wrong sides of the back cover pieces. Serge or zig zag borders as well.

Step Seven: As I mentioned yesterday, I think Sew Katie Did does a phenomenal tutorial on installing invisible zippers. However, I will show you briefly what I did since it is a little different (but not much..)

You are going to open your zipper and place one of the zipper tapes flush with one of the back cover pieces. You want the right side of the zipper tape placed on the right side of the fabric. Pin zipper to fabric and sew on with your invisible zipper foot.


 Here is a picture of my $2 Coats & Clark zipper foot that is awesome! Go slow and be sure that you are not sewing the zipper teeth as well (ahem.. don't ask me why I mention that..)

 Easy Peasy! Press and enjoy how simple that was.. ok, now to sewing the other side.

 You will want to zip your zipper up while aligning the next part. Again, you will want the other zipper tape right side on the right side of the fabric. Pin and then you can gingerly unzip and sew down.

 Step Eight: You can see below I have all kinds of extra zipper tape - no worries. Now you will pin the front & back cover right sides together. I'M GOING TO YELL THIS NEXT PART - UNZIP YOUR ZIPPER ABOUT HALF WAY. Seriously or else you will be throwing this whole thing away, and that will make you very sad.

Once your zipper is partly unzipped, sew around all the edges with 1/4" seam allowance.

 Great! You're almost completely down. Now snip the corners up to the stitching line - this will give you nice sharp edges and clip off any extra zipper tape.

Since your zipper is unzippped (right??) you can then pull your pillow cover right side out.

Step Nine: Stuff your pillow with the form and enjoy!

You can use this cross paper piece template for a number of things. The really great thing about foundation piecing patterns, is that they are easy to scale up or down. All I ask is that you use this pattern for personal or charitable use.

Come on back tomorrow for The Good/Bad Egg pillow tutorial..

Eggcellent Series #1 - Shabby Faux Chenille

Thank you so much for joining me today! All week I will be presenting different tutorials on how to create Easter pillow covers. What kind of tutorials will I have? I have two different faux chenille, one paper pieced quilted cross, one applique with crochet, and a fun embroidery/crayon tinting.

Are you excited? I am! I have been wanting to make pillows for a long time. However I was afraid of zippers. Granted you can create pillows several different ways, but I always thought a zipper cover was the most professional looking. Earlier this year I learned how to install an invisible zipper easy peasy. The best online tutorial I can refer you to is Sew Katie Did. Seriously that Coats & Clark $2 foot is amazing! I have it on one of my older sewing machines and it has officially become the zipper machine. Now Katie and my guild friend both placed their zippers on the bottom. If I have a fancy back then I do place the zipper on the bottom, but in many cases I'll actually place it the middle of the back.. I think it lays better, but that's just my two cents.. OK, on to the tutorial!

Today I am going to show you how to make this lovely shabby chic pillow cover. You could use this technique for any reverse applique shape, so please experiment and have fun!

Materials needed:
14" pillow form
1/2 yard of linen
1/2 yard of light weight fusible interfacing
large scraps for the eggs
ric rac trim

 Step One: Cut (2) 14" squares of linen fabric.

Step Two: Create your applique shape template. For this pillow I did a basic egg. Now pick out the fabric you will want to use as the applique. Stack four layers of the fabric, making sure the applique shape will easily fit within. Next draw 45 degree angle diagonal marks every inch apart (see photo below). I use my cutting mat, ruler, and erasable marker to create these lines.

Step Three:Sew down every marked line. Next cut end to end down the middle of each marked line, only through the top three layers. Do NOT cut through all four layers. There is a chenille cutter on the market that is perfect for this task, but it is not necessary for this small project.

Step Four: Take a chenille brush or unused toothbrush and severely agitate the freshly cut fabric. I find it helps if you squirt a bit of water on the fabric while you agitate.

Step Five: On the back of applique fabric, draw out your egg shape and cut.

 Step Six: On the front cover about 6" up from the bottom, draw three of the same egg shapes with an erasable marker. Now carefully cut out the middle parts of the egg, leaving at least 1/4" space from the marked applique shape.

 Step Seven: Place the front pillow cover right side down. Pin the applique right side down with it peeking out through the window. Repeat for the remaining two eggs.

 Step Eight: I really like the sketchy look of free motion quilting, so I went crazy with it. You can either free motion around the applique border or use your regular sewing foot. The most important thing is to be sure the you are sewing down through the linen cover and catching the applique.

Step Nine: Cut (2) 14.5" strips of jumbo pink ric rac. Pin one strip above the eggs and one below them; carefully sew right now the middle of the trim.




Step Ten: Cut out (2) 14" squares of the fusible light weight interfacing. Iron interfacing on the wrong sides of both the front and back cover. Next finish the edges of the front and back cover by either running it through your serger or use your sewing machine's zig zap stitch. (This is not imperative, but it makes your pillow more professional..)

Step Eleven: Again, I highly recommend checking out Sew Katie Did's tutorial on adding a zipper. That is exactly how I do it and she explains it very well.

Have questions? Let me know! Come on back tomorrow to see a paper piece quilted cross pillow. It's gorgeous for Easter, but would also make a very sweet Baptism/Blessing/Christening gift.

**Sharing this tutorial at:
Made By You - Skip to My Lou
Sumo's Sweet Stuff
Today's Creative Blog

An Eggcellent Series!

I'm completely obsessed with  making Easter pillows right now. Not sure why, but I've decided to run with it. 

Next week I will be posting tutorials on how to make several different kind of pillows. I have two faux chenille ones featured below. There will also be a paper piece quilted one and an embroidered lovely. I hope you will tune in and get inspired!

And if you are not sewing inclined, I do have these listed in my Etsy shop now..

 Shabby Chic Eggs

Good & Bad Eggs