return on creativity: daffodil pillow

It's super snowy here today, but I am ready for spring.  I made this daffodil pillow this weekend.  Daffodils are by far my favorite flower.  I love the yellow color.  

I did some free motion embroidery on this pillow.  I first tried this technique on my shabby rose pillow.  I'm still honing my skills with this technique so my pillow is not perfect, but I still really like it and I want to get better at this technique.  Here is a great article on free motion embroidery that I found really informative.

Here's how I made my pillow:

1.  I sketched a daffodil and combined my sketch with a script font to create my template.  I printed both the sketch and the word bloom on white paper and cut them out.  Then I pasted each to piece of 12 by 12 paper.

Here's my sketch.

Here's my template.  I used the font The Only Exception.

2.  I then used scotch tape to tape my template to the back of my pillow to prepare for tracing my design.

3.  I traced my design onto the pillow front with a Disappearing Ink Marking Pen and a light box.

4.  I put the darning foot on my sewing machine, dropped the feed dogs, and set my stitch length to 0.  Then I started tracing my design with stitches by guiding the fabric under the needle.

5.  Finally I sewed everything together into a 18 X 18 pillow cover.

Give free motion embroidery a try.  I hope you like it as well as I do!