return on creativity: i love my dog pillow

If you stand still too long in my house you are at risk of having a throw tossed on you and a decorative pillow propped on your head.  I love pillows and I have been making a lot of them lately as evidenced by my third "pillow post" in a row!

This pillow was inspired by Sherry's pillow at Blessings from Our Nest.

I took French for four years in high school and two years in college.  When I saw this pillow I thought, "Oh that's cool.  A pillow that says 'I love my dog' in French."  Um, I'm embarrassed to say that's not what this pillow says.  Don't tell my French teachers.  However, that's what MY pillow says (I hope.  I used a Google translator to double check.)

To make this pillow, I typed and printed my French phrase in a pretty script font.  I chose red linen fabric and as a result, couldn't use my lightbox to trace the words onto the fabric.  Instead I used purple water soluble Mark B Gone.  I sandwiched this between the fabric and the paper and marked over the words with a pen.

I really had to press hard to get anything to transfer.  Then I darkened it with a Sharpie.  There has to be a better way to do this, but in the end it worked.

I hand embroidered my phrase using six threads of light blue embroidery floss and a back stitch.

If you look at Sherry's pillow she has a fabric border.  So simple, but it really dresses up the pillow.  Here's how I did mine.

I cut my fabric one inch longer on all sides.  I used a 12 inch pillow form for this project.  Then I sewed the pillow as I normally would with an envelope closure on the back.  At this point the pillow cover will be too big for the pillow form.  Finally I sewed a one inch seem around the pillow cover creating the border.

To sew the seam I measured one inch from the needle on my sewing machine and marked on a piece of masking tape.  Then I ran the fabric along the mark while I sewed just as you would with smaller seam allowances.  (If you look closely you can see another mark farther out on my machine...I've done this before.)

The pillow looks perfect in my guest bedroom.