Quilted Pillows - A Penguin and BB8
Winter/Spring 2019.
I had to keep these two projects pretty secret! These pillows were two parts of a three part gift for my pastor and his wife. They were expecting their third baby and I wanted to make something for baby’s older siblings, one of whom I taught in Sunday School! I also work at my church for my pastor, so needless to say, the family is pretty special to me and I wanted to make gifts that were just as special.
I knew the older sister loved penguins, so I knew a penguin pillow would be perfect for her! I texted her mom out-of-the-blue to ask what her daughter’s favorite colors were. Thankfully, she answered and didn’t ask any questions! The answer was pink or teal. Since I knew I planned to embroider the penguin with her initial, I used pink and teal. The penguin’s belly was perfect for embroidering, so I started with it. I actually had some leftover black dotted fabric from the deer quilt and knew it would work great with the rest of the penguin. I used a teal thread for the embroidery and put a large, curly “S” on it – her initial.
After I embroidered the fabric, I cut the embroidered piece into the rectangle I would need for the penguin belly. Assembly the rest of the pillow top went quickly and was super fun! The embroidered piece went in smoothly and looked so good! Side note: Those eyes finished at ½” square!
For the background of the pillow, I found the pinkest Kona pink. The beak of the penguin also used a little leftover orange from the Elmo quilt. I really like tying my projects to one another in some way!
For the older brother, who I knew loved Star Wars, I made a BB8 pillow. I found a free pattern online and scaled it down half-size to make it into a pillow. This one had a ton of tiny pieces but was also fun to make! I’ve always loved math, so having to re-size the pattern was part of the fun! The older brother had several favorite colors, one of which was blue, so that became the background color for his pillow. I used some of the light blue fabric from the deer quilt I made. As I’m typing this, I just realized that both pillows used fabric from the deer quilt!
After making each character pillow top, one with a penguin and one with BB8, I made a quilt sandwich (top, batting, backing) to create the front of the pillow. The backing of the quilt sandwich would be on the inside of the pillow so I used white for it. Then I made four more quilt sandwiches; two for each of the pillow backs. I used the background fabrics to make the additional sandwiches, and white for the backing. These pillows had an envelope style closure, which is why I needed two for each pillow.
For the quilting on the pillows, I drew a chalk outline around the character of each pillow, ½” from the characters’ edges. I then drew horizontal straight lines across the pillow. I quilted along horizonal line, going toward the character, up or down along the ½” line, then away from the character on the next horizontal line. It worked really well! This method of quilting came about because I knew I didn’t want to quilt in the embroidery on the penguin and this way, both pillows had the same quilting style!
For the backs of the pillows, I used horizontal lines spaced the same distance apart as the front of the pillows. The thread, which matched the background of each pillow, I actually had on hand. The colors matched the fabric exactly which I didn’t know when I picked the fabrics!
After quilting and trimming each of the pillow pieces, I put binding on the back flaps of each pillow. I used the same binding method that I use when binding a quilt and it added a nice finished look to the flaps.
Then I put the pillow top face up, placed one flap face down, then the other on top, pinned, and sewed all around the pillow. Once I turned the pillow right sides out, I put in a pillow form and they were ready to go!
These were the first quilted pillows I made, but they won’t be the last! They were so fun to do and very special to make!
For the baby, I made a quilt! But more on that later!
