A Simple Finding Dory Pillow for Lucky

Lucky loves Finding Dory.  Of any Disney characters he could want, I'm happy for him to collect licensed products with fish on them.  One day when we were shopping at JoAnn Fabrics and we came across some Finding Dory fabric that also had the other characters - Hank, Destiny, Bailey, Nemo, Marlin and Dory.  This was perfect!

I had an extra randomly sized pillow form from when I created pillow forms out of a bed pillow. This pillow form measures 12" x 18.5".  

I purchased 1/2 yard of the Finding Dory fabric.  I planned to just use a panel on the pillow but Lucky kept talking about his Finding Dory pillow and asking if I had made it yet.  One Sunday, I decided to let him help me make the pillow.  He could watch as I cut the fabric and I would put my machine on the slowest speed so Lucky could press the food pedal for me.  Sounds great, right?  

Unfortunately, I didn't think about my measurements correctly.  I wanted to just make a simple envelope pillow case with overlapping edges in the middle of the back, but there just isn't enough fabric.  I could get away with it if I wanted to rotate the fabric 90 degrees, but I want the pillow to be used in landscape orientation.  There is enough fabric for me to wrap the pillow like a present, so I could make a case with no opening... but it would still be a close fit if I were to try making a case with a velcro closure.  

We need another trip to the fabric store.  Sorry, Lucky.  This quick project is going to be a little more complicated.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to buy more of the same fabric (which would require a second 1/2 yard purchase) of if I wanted to get a half yard of a second fabric.  Hopefully I could bring Lucky to the store with me so we could pick something out together. 

I could have purchased more of the original fabric, but then I would have been annoyed if I couldn't line up the front and back correctly.  This Nemo, Marlina and Dory fabric on a light background is a nice complement to the complete cast fabric I plan to use on the front of the pillow.  

When I sat down to finish writing this post, I couldn't find my notes on the pattern in the blogger app.  I searched my Gmail account and couldn't find any notes there either.  What on Earth did I do with them?  I was sitting outside with my laptop, Lucky was at school and Rowdy was running around.  How can I finish this post if I don't have my notes?  Suddenly I realized... my notes were HAND WRITTEN!  Since I was working on this pillow with Lucky I didn't want to pull out my computer.  Therefore I wrote the notes out by hand.  I'll have to go inside to finish up this post.

I cut out three pieces of fabric for this pillow; two 13" x 15" pieces and one 13"x 19.5" piece for the front.  I wanted to make sure that the swimming fish would be lined up, so I cut the fabric lengthwise along the fold and then adjusted the widths by cutting it down the middle.  

I created a double hem (this I didn't even measure) and stitching it closed.  Lucky REALLY likes holding down the pedal of my machine.  I did have to give him some warnings about adjusting the speed, that part is only for Mommy's!

I created the pillow "sandwich" double and triple checking that I had the correct orientation for everything and then sewed around the outside edge with a 1/4" seam. I think that I was worried about the pieces being too snug but I had enough space to get away with 1/2" seams.  Oh well! I was so excited to see the final pillow that I forgot to clip the corners, but they are pointy enough for me.  

Lucky doesn't seem to mind, either.  He was so excited to play with the pillow that HE made that I had trouble keeping him still to take some pictures.  

I've come a long way from when I would make pillows with fabric glue!  A sewing machine is much faster.

I love that my boys are growing up thinking that I can make them anything.  I certainly can't make ANYTHING, but I will try.  I hope that they continue to ask "Mommy, can you make this?" before "Mommy, can you buy this?" for a long time.

Lucky has been asking me for some more "toe blankets", i.e. blankets that are long enough to cover his toes.  He has been sleeping with some of his baby quilts for almost a year now and I think he's ready for something bigger.  I still haven't made Lucky a quilt but it looks like I should make him at minimum a twin sized quilt.  I have my inspiration fabrics so now I just need to find some more coordinating fabrics and get ready to sew.  

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links.  All product selections are my own, no one solicited me to promote them.  

Striped Name Pillows

When I was designing Lucky's Under the Sea Nursery, I made him some fish throw pillows.  I had so much fabric left over after making Rowdy's Quilt that I wanted to make him a pillow, too.  As I was cutting for the quilt I had this vision of making a striped front with his name appliqued on the front.  (At one point I considered appliqueing Rowdy's name on the back of his quilt but decided that I didn't want to hide that on the back of a quilt and it deserved to be its own project.)  The decorative pillow will live on the full bed in Rowdy's room, when it isn't being used in pillow forts, that is.

I also have fabric left over from Lucky's nursery, plus some other fabric that belongs under the sea.  Why not make Lucky a pillow with his name on it, too?  

The pillow forms I plan to use are 16"x26".  I cut out 11 strips each 3" wide and at least 17" long.  The width will be greater than 26" and the edge pieces might not be quite as wide as the rest but I wanted this to be a fast project.  I plan to use the same chevron fabric for an overlapped back that I used for Rowdy's quilt.  

It took longer to lay out the 11 strips than it did to sew them. Well, this isn't exactly true but it feels like it. I really wanted to take the time to balance out the colors.  I sewed them together with 1/4" seams and then pressed them open.  

In my first applique letter project I drew backwards bubble letters freehand.  I want to make something a little more advanced for these pillows so I decided to print out the letters I wanted to use.  Looking at the front fabric draped on the pillow, I decided to try to make the letters 6" tall.  This should be big enough for the name to be prominent without disappearing over the curvature of the pillow.

I wanted to aim for 6" tall letters, but the font that I selected would have ended up a bit too wide to be easily read on the pillow.  I reduced the font "Hobo Std" from 450 to 400 and printed out the letters again.  Next, I traced the backwards letters onto the appropriate side of my EZL12 Pellon Lite EZ-Steam II fusible webbing.

My first applique project was with quilting cotton on canvas.  I haven't appliqued with quilting cotton on to quilting cotton so I wanted to practice before doing it on the pillows.  In order to test the applique, I made a test strip by sewing two pieces of 3" fabric together and remnant applique pieces from cutting out letters.  (The blue is to test applique border colors for another project that is coming up on the blog.)

For the satin stitch in navy thread, I settled on the zigzag (stitch 8 on my machine) with width 2 and distance 0.3.

I cut the striped pieces down to be 28" x 17.5".  I plan to do half inch seams all around and didn't think it was worth trimming 0.25" from either end of the pillow so on the edges I'll use a 0.75" seam.  I tried to place the letters roughly centered using the stripes as a bit of a guide.  I am lucky that both boys have names with 5 letters so there is a nice balance between the two pillows.

Appliqueing went much better than I thought.  I was nervous that I would have some problems with the machine but everything went really smoothly.

I wanted the front of the pillows to have some more structure but I didn't want to take the time to quilt these lovely fronts I created.  I trimmed the threads and then  used iron on fleece (TP971F - Fusible Thermolam Plus) to stabilize the front of the pillows.

For each pillow back, I cut two pieces that would overlap to close the pillow.  The large piece measured 17.5" x 20.5" and the small piece 17.5" x 14.5".  I hemmed the edges of the back by pressing 1/4" and then 1/2", finishing with a straight stitch.

Oh man, i just realized that I was using a brown bobbin when I was hemming the back of the pillow edges.  Thankfully it is still a dark color and you can't really tell.  I don't want to rip it out and start over now that I've finished 3/4 of the hems!

I assembled the pillows as follows:  Name applique right side up, large piece right side down, small piece right side down.  I stitched 1/2" around all of the edges, clipped the corners and turned right side out.

Finally these pillow cases are complete!  I don't think they quite match what I had in my head back when I was cutting for my first ever quilt, but I am nevertheless happy with them.  I still have a TON of extra fabrics from these projects, I wonder what else I should make out of them!

A final press and the pillows were ready to move into their respective rooms.

Lucky was especially excited to have his own name pillow.  He LOVES letters and can read and spell the names of our family.  (Whenever we see a popular truck brand with Rowdy's name on it Lucky is very excited to tell us about it.)  

Lucky really wanted his "very special pillow" to go in his crib every night but we decided that it would be best on his chair for bedtime snuggles instead.  This way he can see the pillow from his crib, or at least that is the logic we used with an almost 3 year old!  

The boys were so cute that I couldn't leave you with just one picture of them playing with their pillows.  I think I now have an applique bug.  What else can I personalize for the boys?

7/11/16 - 7/12 cut the top fabric.  7/23/16 stitched the top strips together.  
8/24/16 finished assembly.  

LÄTT Table Hack for Lucky

I love going to Ikea.  There is something about the showroom that gets me really excited about decorating our home.  I've been sharing a lot of non-knitting based craft projects lately because I spent a lot of last fall decorating Lucky's nursery and then using up the remaining crafting components.  As we are starting to think about our own first house, I like thinking about what kinds of things I can do with a space that is all our... but that is another story.  Today I'm excited to share with you the LÄTT Table and Chairs Hack we did to create a vibrant set for Lucky.  These table and chairs are only $19.99 at Ikea (the same set is more than twice as much through Amazon) and built out of plain, unfinished wood.  This is the PERFECT set to paint and modify.  In this post you will learn what worked, and what didn't work about my attempt to modify this set.

The cardboard boxes from Ikea made a perfect "dropcloth" for this painting project.  We set up our Summer Infant Playyard Fence around the work area to keep Indy from furring up the painting.

The plan was to cover the seats in some raindrop fabric that we ended up not using for Lucky's pillows.  We wanted to paint the wood portions purple, blue and teal and turn the white top into a Navy Chalkboard using navy paint and hen a clear chalkboard coating.

When I did the first coat of acrylic navy on the table top, it didn't stick very well.  I left the brush strokes and hoped that the second coat would stick to the top better than the first.

After the fact I realized that maybe we should have painted the wrong side of the table top, maybe it was more porous and would have held the paint on better, but when the second coat and two chalk board layers went on okay, I stopped worrying.

In between layers of the chalkboard, I painted the wood sections.  I used Frog tape to cover the cross sections of the chair backs.  I wanted this section to be the same color as the table so it would be clear that the colors were intentional.

If I were to do it again I might have made all horizontal sections teal, and all vertical pieces either purple or blue, but I didn't know how well my painting would come out. Each section had at least two coats of paint.  The purple was much thinner than the blue, even though they were the same brand so I had to do an extra coat to make the color solid.  

I had a lot of trouble selecting the teal paint color.  I wanted this color to pick up the fabric from the seats, but many of the teals were too blue and not bright enough.  I was nervous, but not only is this teal color EXACTLY what I wanted but it is the same hue as the purple and blue.  I think these three colors will really pop together!

I wish I had painted the cross bars of the chair backs first because it was an easier seal to make with the tape.  It looked great after I took the tape off to reveal the teal bars, but you can see some flecks

This paint isn't being sealed in with anything, so I'm expecting it to scratch easily.  However for a $20 set of table and chairs, if it picks up a distressed look I'm okay with that.  I mean, my kid is going to draw and paint at this table, so the point is just to make the set look less boring.

Covering the top of this table was an epic failure.  I scraped off some of the paint as I inserted the top into the table, so I patched it up with a q-tip and some excess navy paint.  Since a little navy paint got on the teal, I used frog tape on the edge to touch it up.  But look what happened when I removed the frog paint!  OH NO!

Thankfully all of this paint came off really easily  I just disassembled the table, removed the table top and pealed all of the paint off.  Oh well.  Some ideas work better than others.  I didn't feel like trying this whole experiment again on the bottom of the white piece because I didn't feel like having it fail a second time.  We'll make Lucky a cool chalk board in our future house some other way.

The bottom of the chairs had nothing to prevent them from scratching the floor, so I added some "FIXA" pieces to the bottom.  No point in messing up the floors in a rental place!

Next, it was time to secure the fabric to the chair tops to tie this whole set together.  I purchased some 3M General Purpose 45 Spray Adhesive and sprayed the underside of one of the chair tops.  Why the underside?  If this got messed up again I wanted to be able to undo it!  

 

More problems!  UGh there are ugly splotches!!  Crap what should I do now?  This project could have been done SO MUCH SOONER if these things hadn't happened.  *Sigh*  I think that I sprayed on too much adhesive and didn't let it sit to thicken long enough before adding the fabric.  These stains did not go away after a few hours, so I knew I wanted to start over.  I pealed off the stained fabric and started over.  This time I let the adhesive sit for a bit and blotted the surface before applying the fabric.  NO STAINS!  WAHOO!

It was finally time to assemble the chairs.  The key - attach the two small boards to the bottom before adding the sides.  I don't think you could slide the top in easily, you have to really press it.

It took some work to get the chair in there, but the bottom with fabric on either side did ultimately fit.  I trimmed the fabric from the underside of the chair and then they were ready to go!

When it is all completed I feel exhilarated.  I had an idea and executed it without instructions!  I even had two almost fail moments and bounced back.  It is so satisfying when a craft project is successful!

For 15 month old Lucky's first time playing with his table, I wanted to set him up with something special.  I therefore decided to make some blue-raspberry Jello Play dough.  I store it in the fridge, and although it gets sticker over time it lasted a few weeks.  Lucky LOVES to play with playdough!

Not only does Lucky love his playdough, he loves his table and chair set!  This will not stay super clean for long, this strong 15 month old loves to pick up the chairs and drag them all over the house.  The edge of the table is accumulating dried playdough spots and the top is getting crayon marks.  Unlike other things I've made, this project is MEANT to be played with.  Each mark gives the already well-loved set some character.

If I cared about preserving the table better, I could have varnished the table and chairs to seal in the paint and protect the fabric... but not only do we not have a good, ventilated space to do this but I didn't really feel like going that extra step for something so simple.  

The LÄTT chairs can hold an adult's weight, but the table is so low that it is easy to sit on the floor to pay.  This set has brought us so much joy already that it was worth every penny!