day 181: christmas pillows

pollyanna's finished pillow

ben's finished pillow

day 181 and today the peeps and i made christmas pillows.  we started out by looking through pinterest for ideas which we pinned to our 2011 advent crafts board and then selected the ones we thought we could make today using the printing on fabric technique i LOVE so much :)

ben chose this design ... totally him, he loves the concept of naughty or nice and frequently finds himself on the edge of the cliff!  i am sure over the festive season the pillow will be turned frequently ;)  if you are not into sewing, the lovely debra from joshua by oak sells them on etsy.  it looks like this design is copyrighted so ben and i decided not to copy it and instead did the nice and the naughty on different sides of the pillow.  after using freezer paper to print on fabric (you can see me attempt it for the first time here!) i got ben to do some sewing and stuffing to complete his pillow.

what's required to print on fabric

it's so nice having help with my pinterest inspired
creations!

are you feeling ....

.... or this?

pollyanna chose this design and luckily it comes with a tutorial and is not subjected to copyright!  the tutorial from the 36th avenue is fantastic but i thought would be a little challenging for my little seven year old peep, so we modified the idea.  we used an envelope feel for the front and then on the flip side of the pillow we wrote her letter to santa. once we had printed off both sides, pollyanna sat down for her first attempt at sewing and then stuffed the resulting pillow!

the typesetting on the computer

one happy girl learning to sew under the watchful eye
of her big brother!

side one of polly's pillow

side two of polly's pillow :)

outcome:  the peeps did so well, i think i may employ them to do my straight line sewing!  actually both their pillows turned out so well i made some more of my own using the same designs.  i thought pollyanna's pillow was such a great reminder of what she wanted from santa for 2011, i made one for ben as well and thought we could make yearly ones to sit on their beds during december.  then i decided to make more of ben's because every one should have access to a pillow like that!  the only downside was we made so many pillows to be stuffed we ran out of stuffing!

my thanks to debra from joshua by oak for the inspiring idea to use nice and naughty on a pillow for christmas and also many thanks to desiree at the 36th avenue for a wonderful tutorial and the very inspiring design of her christmas photos!  She is incredibly crafty so i suggest having a look at her blog and being wowed!