So this is beautiful, right? It's Anthropologie's Orimono pillow. I've loved it for awhile; it reminds me of THIS pillow I made, probably my favorite one ever.
Anyway, I finally gave it a try, so here's my version:
I love it pretty hard. I originally wanted to have a lot of different fabrics on it (like the inspiration), but I looked at my fabric stash and I just didn't have what I wanted. I also didn't want to buy any fabric for it. So I used my current favorite fabric (from a set of bed skirts found at a thrift store for a few bucks). For the design- I drew it all on the paper side of some Heat N Bond, cut out the flower as a whole, ironed it to the cloth, and then proceeded cutting a piece out one bit at a time and placing it on my cut out pillow front. It took some time. After I removed that paper bits and ironed it to the pillow, I did a zig zag around each little petal:
{That also took some time.}
So, like I said, I love it pretty hard. If I ever find the blue pom pom trim I bought to got around the edges of the pillow, I'll probably unpick the whole thing and add it in. Then I'll love it even more. Even more than a fat kid loves cake. But that's only if I ever find that trim.
After the red one, I made a few more. I'll probably sell them in my Etsy shop, but we'll see. They might end up as gifts.
{I would keep this one, too, but the greens look really gross with my wall color.}
I'm not exactly sure what I was going for with this last one. Maybe a wonky chevron/modern interpretation of waves? I still like it, regardless.
So, any opinions out there on what I should do with them? Or how much I should sell them for?
I love this pillow. You probably won't, if you really love good embroidery. Because I'm not an embroiderer. I know the name of like 2 stitches, and I'm not very good at either. However, I like my very imperfect, informal style of embroidering, at least on this pillow. Here she is:
I used a combination of all the stitches I knew how to do and did some machine embroidering/appliquéing as well.
{Machine zig zag around the edge, hand sewn buttons.}
{Blanket stitch around the edge plus a running stitch to attach the vintage lace.}
{All machine.}
{Running stitch}
{Running stitch plus back stitching}
I used gray flannel for the pillow body. I had wanted to use burlap, but then realized that would be really hard to embroider on it.
It was fun to make this. I'm no hand sewing expert, so it was just kind of fun to try whatever and just kind of mess around on this pillow. All the unevenness adds charm, right?
The internet at my house is down. Blerg. It went down last night, right before I tried to post about these onsies. I lost the entire post. Not that it was really long, but it was pretty annoying. So I’m writing this in Word because it’s better than doing dishes.
I have a sweet friend who’s having her first baby next month, a boy. I missed her baby shower because of stupid pneumonia, but I finally got her gift to her:
You may recognize the style of the ones on the left from this post, but the two on the right are some new ones I thought up (except I kind of ripped off the turtle idea from Mini Boden). The submarine is yellow, which I think makes it awesome, and the turtle wraps around to the back and he has a little tail, which I think makes that one awesome.
Some close ups:
So, I’ve been considering selling these types of onsies on Etsy. I got my shop a little bit set up months ago now, but I still haven’t done it. Maybe it’s that I’m intimidated by all the fantastic stuff on there. Maybe I’m scared nothing will sell (which when I think about it, totally wouldn’t be a big deal). I’ve mostly gotten over my other fear, which was that there were a million other shops out there doing the exact same thing. I mean, there are a lot of shops that have appliquéd onsies, but they mostly seem to be little guy ties or ones with numbers, for birthdays. And the vast majority is on plain white onsies- I don’t think I’ve seen any others that are hand dyed. Or that have a hand-appliqué component to them.
So what do you think? Would mine sell? You can be honest, I can take it.
Even though I only have one child, I feel like I'm an expert on bibs. I've tried so many many kinds, and this is the one I use day to day:
These are great. However, there is a type of bib I like even better, but that I only just got around to making. It's the kind my mom has at her house for the grandkids to use. This kind:
{It looks like she's going to cry, but she wasn't sad.}
It's just a dishtowel and some knit scraps. But the coverage is wonderful. And that's what I'm looking for, now that most of the food Mim drops is intentional, the pocket bibs are not as effective as they once were. Anyway, it's super easy. I got a dishtowel from the dollar store and cut a hole in it. Then I cut a strip of knit the same length as the circumference of the neck hole.
The strip of knit I used was 3.5 inches, so after it was folded in half and you take the seams into account, the finished width was 1.5 inches. I added a simple applique at the bottom out of the same blue knit- a bird.
The eye of the bird isn't permanent- it'll wash out (and I'm glad, because it looks weird). Here it is, in action:
I'm liking it a lot. I'm going to make a bunch more, since you can't just rinse these in the sink and reuse (which is great about the baby bjorn one). There are, however, a lot of pros:
+Total coverage- I don't have to strip Mim down at all, because this covers everything. +At 1$ and less than 10 minutes to make, it's not a major investment in any way. I know they'll end up being stained beyond recovery, but it won't be a big deal. +It comes up snug underneath her chin (no gaps for food to fall down and ruin clothes). +Comfortable- sometimes the pocket of the stiff bib would prevent Mim from leainning forward like she wanted to. +The length. Any food that does get dropped unintentionally just rolls down the bib and onto the floor, leaving her clothes untouched. I'm going to have to clean the floor anyway, so it's not a big deal.
One major drawback: not waterproof. That's getting to be less and less an issue, though, with her hand eye coordination improving. Hooray!
I think I'm going to switch over entirely. Ah, to the dollar store!
I made the form that went in the cover as well. Mike and I seem to accumulate pillows. Like old standard size bed pillows. They're in the top of our hall closet, under Mim's crib, in the basement, everywhere. So I decided to convert some of them into throw pillows. I actually decided that forever ago, but I haven't had the courage to commit to a fabric. Thus, this endeavor started when I saw some monk's cloth at the fabric store. I loved it. So soft, but with so much texture. Plus, it was neutral! It's like all those burlap pillows out there, but soft and usable (no offense to the burlap pillows, they look great). Anyways, here's the beginning:
(This was late last night and it was dark- don't judge my crappy picture. Also, don't judge my crappy pictures when it's light outside.)
I cut it open and took out the stuffing. I had thought I would reuse the outside of the pillow, but changed my mind when I saw how not-white-anymore it was. So I used the pillow case it had been in.
I cut it off so it would be a square after it was finished (which meant leaving it 3/4 of an inch longer than the already finished side). Then I pressed it under 3/4 of an inch and sewed it mostly closed.
Then I stuffed it and finished it off (on the machine- no need to hide seams, since it was just going to be in a slipcover). Then there were some steps I didn't take pictures of. I used a red knit and heat and bond to adhere my letter to the front of my pillow cover, then used a close zig zag around it.
Then I hemmed the two back pieces (which overlapped about 5 or 6 inches, unfinished).
I hemmed them down about 3/4 of an inch, then ran another stitch really close to the top, since it's a thick material and I just didn't think pressing it was going to cut it.
Then I set it all out, and pinned it. I zig zagged along all the raw edges, then straight stitched about 3/4 of an inch in, so I could be sure I was off the fraying bits. Then I turned it right side out, put my new pillow form in it, and voila!
Another evidence of my recent obsession with monograms.
I have a two month old nephew, and I started planning for some appliqued tie onsies before he was born. Remember this post, when I realized applique was not going to be as easy as I hoped? Well, I checked out a few different methods on craft blogs and realized that Heat N Bond was key. And so:
I branched out from my original tie plans, as you can see, but I still made a few for when baby Hugh's feeling especially dapper:
And now, some close ups:
I free-handed all the designs, and for the dinosaur I used a straight stitch on the spinal ridge and a zig zag around the body. The ridge will fray some after it's washed, which I did on purpose.
I double zig zagged all around the edges of the plaid square, then hand stiched around the felt "h" with thread I quadrupled.
The star is also felt, but I used embroidery floss around the edges.
The elephant just has a single zig zag around it. I'm really excited about the way they turned out- Heat N Bond really did make it super simple. That stuff is great.
I love these. And other similar items. I decided to make some for my new nephew, baby Hugh, but first I did a tester for Mim.
It was a lot trickier than I planned (that's why there will no closeups- it's not super neat). I even used a nice machine, my mom's Bernina. I have some idea for altering my approach for the ones for baby Hugh, but if any of the three of you out there reading this have ever had success with any machine appliqueing technique, let me know.
