a friend of mine is having a birthday on friday and she loves elephants, so i knew i wanted to make her something elephanty. i searched for elephant prints and decided on this one: Valori Wells Karavan Marrakech Peacock. the elephants are pretty large in this print so i decided a cute pillow was the way to go. after conferring with some sewing friends, i decided to do a coordinating fabric for the back, and i picked this Valori Wells Karavan Savannah Peacock
i ordered a half yard of each fabric and actually you could get a whole pillow out of one half yard, so i had enough to do a second pillow, but decided to save the fabric and maybe i'll make her a boxy makeup bag or something with it for christmas.
the last pillow i made i discovered you really have to interface your fabric or the polyfill will try to start poking through your fabric, which leaves little fuzzies everywhere, and that's no good. this time i was going to buy some cheap white fabric and interline it rather than using fusible lightweight interfacing, which i thought made the fabric feel stiffer than i wanted. but then i was at joann's getting an invisible zipper to use (i picked a matching light blue), and saw they had a set of 2 pre-made pillow forms 50% off. so i decided to just save my time and use the pre-made ones. (plus this gave me another pillow form to use for another friend's birthday coming up in october.) the pillow forms are 16" square, which is exactly what i wanted.
And here's the final result, sitting on my bright red sofa, which will not be its final home. my friend has a mostly purple color scheme, so i think this pillow will fit much better in her house because there are purples in the elephant print, plus did i mention, she LOVES elephants.
front |
side |
back |
i really hope she likes it.
almost forgot....
gratuitous dog photo!
Oh the pillow is wonderful. What a lucky friend. I bet she really enjoys it. And I love the dog pic - they always look so peaceful when they sleep!
ReplyDeletethanks! i hope she does too!
Deleteella does look so cute when she sleeps, sometimes she kicks her little legs like she's going for a run in her dreams =)
Hi, pup! What a sweetie! This sounds like the perfect gift for your friend!
ReplyDeleteThanks! and ella says "Hi" back! well she doesn't say much, but she's thinking it =)
DeleteGreat minds again - I did almost exactly the sane cushion for a friend of mind who loves nellies, except in two of the other colour ways! Photos are somewhere on my blog, I'll get the link when I find it...yours look cute! (And so does Ella!)
ReplyDeleteoh i love yours!!! i just typed "elephant" in the search box on your blog and found yours =)
DeleteLate comment as I'm reading back through your blog. Great pillow. I discovered you through Karen's Sewlutions links. A quick tip on getting a squarer look to the corners - shave off a half inch on each corner, tapering to nothing about half way to the middle of the pillow. I found this tip in the Simplicity sewing for the home book, but there is an explanation and a diagram at this link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sewdaily.com/blogs/sewdaily/archive/2012/04/25/the-coolest-trick-for-sewing-a-pillow.aspx
Thanks for the tip! I couldn't get the corners perfect, but I just serged the entire pillow.
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