I just completed my second wool pillow. I made it for Icebat. Like the last one, it was inspired by the Japanese book "wool patchwork: warm quilt for the home."
I purchased these packs of felted wool from The City Quilter. They are from Wild Thymes Pattern Co., and they look quite appealing in their little stacks.
I was inspired by this lovely picture from the book. I love how their version is both wooly and lemony at the same time.
They have some instructions in Japanese in the back, but I could figure out what I wanted to do by looking at the photo, so I didn't refer to them. Here's my quick sketch for my version of the project. I carry around a little notebook of graph paper for this purpose - sometimes I work things out on the subway. This is one of the simplest designs ever - it's almost embarrassing to put it here:
I'm finding using the cotton fill pretty liberating, because when I use it I'm not married to any particular pillow size. I decided to make the pillow 12" x 12" because I thought it would be cute.
I played with the squares until I got something I liked:
I don't know if you can see it here, but there is a nice herringbone mixed in there. These little pieces of wool are rather expensive, and I caught myself obsessing at a brunch this weekend over my friend's vintage pants. I can see myself going out and trolling the flea markets for some old clothing - because if I'm going to continue with the wool pillow making I need to find a cheaper way to do it.
The wool was considerably more difficult to iron than the cotton quilt fabric I'm used to. I normally iron both the seam allowances in one direction, but with the wool, I carefully pressed the seam allowances open so that they wouldn't be too thick. I really had to lean on the iron to get those seams to stay down!
Then I took a bowl of pom-poms, sat down with my favorite cup of tea, and set upon the task of sewing those cute little pom-poms onto the pillow top. This is a good activity to do while watching TV.
Cute as a button! I like how Icebat looks both bashful and proud in this picture - I intentionally chose the pom-poms to match him. Ta-da!
3 comments:
your pillow is so cute and so fall! I especially love the detail of the pom poms in each of the corners. Nice job!
icebat sure does look handsome next to your woolly pillow and vice versa. you seem like such a nice, placid sort of gal. but whatever happened to your embroidery "with an edge"? let's see more of that!
love that pillow! so adorable.
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