Make Something: Olive You Pillow

Very few of my crafting adventures turn out exactly like I planned/hoped/wished, and this is one of those few.  I made this pillow as a birthday gift for my (newly) 17 year old cousin.  I am seriously in love with this pillow and thrilled with how well it turned out.

For the pillow, I followed the same instructions as my other applique pillows, but this time I actually decided to stitch down the felt, instead of just relying on the fusible interfacing.  My Halloween pillows are starting to come undone just a little, and I didn't want SK's pillow to fall apart.  The pillow itself is a beautiful medium weight linen.  

Basically I just top stitched around the olive and the heart using a 1/2" and 1/4" stitch allowance, respectively.  The stitching on the heart is a little wonky, because my bobbin thread was catching really bad so I had to hand turn my machine.  I'm ok with it being wonky.  It adds character.

I traced the letters using the Bebas font.  I top stitched them down as well, but I just stitched down the middle of each letter.  You really can't even see the stitches.

The pillow took me around 2 hours from start to finish, because of the time/effort involved in changing out all of the bobbin thread and cutting and ironing all of the shapes.  Construction of the pillow itself took around 30 minutes.

Definitely worth the effort for such a darling pillow.

Martha Gyver

Jason took our can opener to work. (Don't ask).  I had to cut open 3 cans of tomatoes for some pasta sauce that need to simmer for 3 hours, which led to this...

One part Martha.  One part McGyver.

Somehow I managed to keep all of my fingers in tact.  Worth the effort for some delicious sauce.

Happy Monday!