In honor of lovers worldwide, I've taken a cue from my grandmother's era of youthful frivolity and freedom and embroidered a little boudior mini-pillow.
The embroidery is done here on red linen, upcycled from a women's shirt, and stitched using backstitch, stab stitch, and open lazy daisy in black and white embroidery floss.
The design lends itself to being cut as a heart shape and made into a Valentine's Day present or wedding or anniversary keepsake.
Rather than use a pom pom edging, I lightly rolled bits of wool into soft balls and tucked them inside a strip of chiffon handkerchief which is whipstitched along the edge between the balls.
The embroidery pattern is for sale here in my Etsy shop.
The file for sale is just the embroidery pattern. The full-size pattern fits into a 6" hoop, but it can be enlarged or reduced.
Here's how I made the mini-pillow:
Stack the pillow-to-be fabric in this order: backing right side up then embroidered heart wrong side up.
In this case I used a vintage handkerchief which is very thin fabric so I have an extra layer of white calico muslin behind that.
Stitch around the heart shape, leaving a small opening along one side. Turn right side out and push the edges out with a chopstick. Press gently on the back side with a warm iron.
Using cotton balls or wool fleece, make enough little balls to edge the heart.
Using a strip of fabric 1 1/2 times the circumference of the heart, stitch around the heart, capturing a little fluffy ball inside. Use a whip stitch around the ball edges and the edging will start to look like fabric beads.
lovely project--the edging is brilliant! Thanks for sharing the how-to.
ReplyDeleteThe edging was an experiment and I'm glad it worked out. My first thought was to make a sort of fabric ball pom pom edging, but that was just too fiddly. I'm very satisfied with the way it turned out.
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