To all of our friends states-side, we hope you all enjoyed this Memorial Day! After a fun weekend of hiking and swimming it was time for our family to relax on this holiday with some sewing. My daughter wanted to "make something pink" and after some rather lavish design ideas from miss Annie, I convinced her to forgo the superhero fairy-princess dress and opt instead for an easy applique pillow. If you have small kids with an interest in sewing, and who like to be in the driver's seat behind the sewing machine, I'd recommend whipping one up together.
We started with a Fat Quarter Bundle of Woodland Tails from Sheri Berry Designs, which comes with a great panel print. Since we used a 16" square pillow form, a single FQ did the trick for the pillow top and another for the back. Annie surprised me by selecting the orange fox as her centerpiece - I was all ready to cut out the pink lamb. I suppose she agrees with Pantone that it's the color of the moment! Then again, she handpicked her chevron top so perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised each time she dazzles me with her keen fashion sense. My son Aidan got as far as picking out his fabrics, but moved onto greener pastures to play basketball with Dad. I'll keep trying there...
If you've followed our blog you might remember Annie's tunic and scarf, so she's not entirely new to sewing and we easily completed the pillow in about 90 minutes. But if your child is new sewer, this is still a great place to start. If you are a beginner as well, here's a great tutorial for a simple envelope style pillow like the one we made today. For the applique, we simply cut out the circle, and affixed it to the pillowtop with a zig zag stitch (similar to this design I did here);
Now don't let me fool you, sewing at home with a five year old is not without its challenges. With all of the cutting, ironing, and pinning, sometimes the pace just isn't fast enough and, as you can see, they're not always rapt with attention. Forgetting that most of my tools are at the shop and having to improvise whilst cutting out the centerpiece doesn't help either...
One of the biggest challenges is enforcing a speed limit. Let's just say Annie's got a lead foot when she's at the pedal...
But once the machine is whirring away, I'm still amazed by her careful concentration. I am quite sure that I can feel her pride swell with every stitch.
I'm pretty proud of this little girl myself.
I hope you'll try out this project with your own tiny seamstresses!
