LIVE! Easy Sew: Cute and Colorful Pillow Series - Week 4

Hello, National Sewing Circle. It's me, Emily Steffen from Oh Yay Studio. And today we are in our fourth and final week of our sewing pillow colorful summer mini series that we've been doing every Thursday, the past few weeks. So far we've demonstrated a few different ways to add, I'm gonna show some of them, a rainbow to your pillow with these colorful poms. And the first one we did was a tassel pillow, which was really fun.

And last week we did an ice cream pillow with pom pom ice cream scoops but my daughter has stolen that one and it is permanently in her room and she won't let me take it. So that's fine. I guess it proves that adding color to pillows is what makes kids excited about it. So today we're gonna do the last installment, which is a custom applique pillow, which I know it's backwards for you, but it says hooray. And I'm gonna show you how I add, how I choose colors, how I choose the design and then how I applique it.

And if you are needing the instructions, 'cause I'm not gonna be able to go over every single detail today, as far as construction of the pillow form itself, the instructions are in two different locations. If you are on Facebook, they're in the description in the bottom. And if you're watching from the site, they're in the information in the bottom and then on YouTube, they're in the banner. So click that, it'll bring you to all four of the PDFs for the instructions. So you can follow along at your own pace if you just wanna watch today, but they're there.

Download them, make sure to tag me. 'Cause I love to see when you create. I'm at Oh Yay Studios on all social platforms, so let's get going. And if you have any questions, comment in the comment section if you wanna shout out where you're from, if you wanna choose or tell me different additions or subtractions or modifications you make, that's one of my favorite parts about crafting live is people can jump in and tell me how they would make this or how they'd modify it, it's really fun. So to make this custom applique, here's a shot at it again, I love felt and wool, I'm gonna tilt my camera down just a tiny bit.

So you can see a little bit better. I love felt and wool. The reason I love working with felt and wool is because A, I love the texture of it. I also love the fact that I can stitch it on and I don't have to worry about frayed edges because it's kind of a substrate that is nice and handy and nice and tactile of itself. So this is a hooray pillow.

I asked my daughter, I'm like, hey, Esther, what should I make today? 'Cause I've obviously already made this and we don't need a second hooray pillow in our house. Although it is wonderful. And she goes, mommy, make flowers. And I thought, this is the same concept.

So I'm gonna walk you through how to create your custom applique. And then I'm gonna show you how I applique it on my machine. And this can be translated if you wanna make it into a dinosaur, if you wanna make it into a mermaid, if you wanna make it into your kids or grand kid's name, anything you want. So what you'll need to get started on your custom applique is paper, a marker or some sort of probably non pen, 'cause you wanna get your lines pretty chunky. Scissors, you can cut with paper and then tape if you need it.

So like I said, I'm using, I'm gonna grab it here. Well, first of all, let me show you this. These are the colors I'm gonna use today. I'm gonna show you, tilt it down. This is a, this mustard color is just a pre-done pillow form.

I totally understand that there's a lot of new sewers out there because you've gotten machines or hand me downs or things to make masks. And that's amazing. So I'm giving an option for all of these tutorials except for one of them to be able to use a pillow form. This is just Ikea. It's like a 20 by 20 I believe or 19 by 19 pillow form.

It's a mustard color and these are the colors I'm gonna work with today. These are just felt, it's 100% wool felt, different colors. It's fuchsias and pinks and this I guess matches pretty perfectly. So I guess I'm unsure about this. And then this I'm gonna use this green.

It doesn't look much different but it is quite a bit different from the mustard color. So this is what I'm working with today for a color palette. And I just chose something that was kind of tone on tone because here is a little sketch of what, just some flowers. Oh sorry, Siri, she loves me. Just some flowers that I'm gonna do.

It's the same as if you were to make a word. So let me show you how I do that. I'm gonna set this aside. So first things first is you'll wanna obviously gauge the size of your pillow form and you can do one of two things. You can either keep your paper separate and just start sketching or using your handwriting for the words or if you really want to, which can be really fun is if you, you can use newspaper for this, then you wouldn't even have to tape it all.

You can use recycled paper, you can use anything you want, anything that makes this easy. You could tape this together to make the exact size of your pillow form because then you know exactly the space you're working with. And it kind of acts like a canvas. If you're gonna go to paint or if you're maybe gonna start just sketching on a piece of paper, this is what it will act like. So this will give you, if you're like, oh my gosh, I need to see the whole thing all at once.

This is a good way to do it. And you'll just tape it together. Just run tape here and you can start sketching and you'll see live like how big or how small you wanna make it. I tend, you can totally do that. I tend to just use paper by paper, paper sheet by paper sheet, because as you can see, I sketched this one out.

I laid it on top of my pillow form and I thought, oh my gosh, that's far too tiny. So then this is gonna be the one I'm gonna work with today. So here's like the furnished leaf shape, like how much bigger I made it. You can see the difference and this seems to fit a lot bigger. So it just depends on how you wanna work and what you wanna get going with.

But for the sake of this, I'm gonna sketch out a word so you can see both a picture and a word sketched out to make a custom applique. So let's just do this. Let's just tape this, handy dandy tape on. And this really is cool. If you wanna use newspaper or recycle, Lord knows.

I have a first grader and a preschooler and we get sent home with so many papers throughout the school year. So if you tend to save some of that stuff, this would be a good way to recycle some of that paper because it doesn't much matter what this looks like. This is just gonna become your pattern. And I know this is gonna be backwards because my camera is facing me. So just know that I am doing it forwards.

I know that might seem confusing, but if you look at the PDF of the pattern, you'll see that it is facing forwards. So my daughter's name is Esther. So if I were to wanna make a pillow, this is how I would get started. Just start sketching the letters in a way that you think you would, whoop the R is gonna get a little squishy, but that's okay, you think you would wanna lay it out. So again, if I turn it around, it's gonna be backwards.

It is, I am putting it forward. So just start, just draw it out, just draw it out the way it is. Then you can kind of start blocking it out and keep in mind. This is the one thing I always tell people, keep in mind that as you're sketching this and depending on how thick you want your letters to be, you're not gonna cut out this entire thing at one time, you're gonna cut it out letter by letter. So it doesn't much matter how close the letters are to each other.

But what does matter is how thick your letters are or how thick your pieces are. So in this case is this piece. I feel completely confident sewing and cutting around something that is, this is about, I would say three quarters of an inch, half an inch thick right here at this stem part. So just keep that in mind, if you wanna make it crazy chunky, make it crazy chunky. If you wanna make it really thin, it'll just be a little trickier, but make it thin.

Now the way that I jumping around here a little bit, but I just wanna show you this. I decided I didn't wanna cut out around the Y. And Esther's name right here the only part that that may be applicable is this inside of this R. I didn't wanna work in this portion right here. So I cut another tier drop shape.

I cut the inside the A and I cut the inside of the R. You don't have to do this. This is the fun part about making a custom applique is that you don't have to do this, but this is gonna be an option I would say, if you don't wanna work, these are pretty chunky letters. I would say these letters are about an inch. They're about an inch, a solid inch.

If you can see my knuckle with how thick these letters are, what I'm sketching is a little bit thinner. So just keep that in mind. And if you want to go bigger, you just kind of go bigger and keep bulking out your letters. And what you can do if you're feeling like you really wanna prepare your pattern here is you can cut out multiple versions of this to see how it lays or how you like it which is 100% fine too. This is the fun part about making something custom is that the sky is the limit.

And you'll get an idea of how it's sort of gonna start looking together based on how your chunkiness is working. You could, if you really wanted to be brave, you could do a cursive, which I would love to do. I think that would be fun. I've only connected a handful of letters together at a time, but this gives you the idea. And like I said, you can draw a picture of a dinosaur.

You can draw a picture of a mermaid. You can draw a picture of your cabin. I mean, you could do so, so, so, so so many things. Oh, Jason, oh, you're saying you can see it correctly. It's not mirrored.

That's amazing, that's good. It's mirrored for me. So I was tripping myself up for a second there. That's great, all right. So chunk out your letters, make 'em bulky.

And then step one is, this is totally an insight to how I craft is that take your paper, scissors, start cutting out your letters. And what gonna do is lay it on our pillow form. And if you like it, go with it. If you feel like you need to rework some letters, go back to the drawing board and get another piece of paper. And this also the fun thing that I did think about this, actually, I know mother's day has passed, but maybe there's a special birthday.

How cute would it be to take one of your kids' drawings or one of your, something that's a handwriting and make it into like a pillow for grandma or something like that. I thought, oh, that would be really, really fun. So I'm just cutting the letters out here with my paper scissors. And this is gonna give you a good idea of right, there's an E. And I feel like if I look at the size of this E I 100% could work with this and make it so that I'm, sew with it, applique it.

So this is all you're gonna do. Just like I did with my fern piece. Just like you would do with your letter, just cut it out. And if you don't love it, rework it, go back with another piece of paper and rework it. It's super fun and super versatile in that way.

So the next step is after you have all of your letters, you can lay them out on your pillow form, like I said, and make sure that you like, you can even overlap the letters if you wanna do a phrase, if you wanna get really complicated, if wanna put a big lightning bolt behind it, whatever, you can start layering. This is what I was talking to a friend of mine and I said, this is kind of like painting with fabric, because the way you're gonna start your chunky objects, and then the way that we're gonna attach it, it's kind of like painting and drawing with fabric, which I really, really like. And I understand that this is not the traditional way to applique but this is fun. I think. So what I've done, here's my fern.

And here is my felt. And if you don't wanna use felt or wool, you don't have to, you're just gonna have to stitch around the edges with a satin stitch or a chunkier stitch to cover up where that edge would fray. Like I said, I love the tactileness or the texture of felt and wool. That is amazing. We have a local warehouse type store here near Minneapolis.

That is amazing to get some of this. This is like a garment wool, 100% garment, like 100% wool. That's like a garment wool and I love it. I buy it by the yard a lot. So I'm just gonna lay this here and give it a rough cut around the edges, just so I get the approximate shape.

Here's why, and this step, this next step I do it is optional. I have not done this with every single applique I've done, but I do think it will make your life easier. So this is this amazing substrate or whatever material called heat and bond. And basically what it does is you can kind of see it. This is just like a parchment paper or a wax paper.

And then there's this, I'm gonna try and peel a corner of it off if I can. It's like this layer that when you heat it it acts like glue. It's not gonna peel off for me 'cause it's stuck. So essentially, oh, here, it looks like this right here. Oh boy.

Well, you get the idea. It's like a glue and it's just like this crisscross kind of material. And basically what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna cut out a chunk of this, iron it onto here, cut out my shape, peel off this paper. And then when I iron this onto my pillow form, it's gonna stick so that I don't have to pin it when I'm actually sewing it on my machine. Now you do not have to do this step because you could totally just pin it, but it does make life a little bit easier.

It just does because I feel like you do a lot less pinning, which I really appreciate. So I'm going to just give myself the same approximate sizing here. And it's very cheap. This stuff is very cheap. You can find it any big box store it's called heat and bonds.

I know there's other, you can buy a very thin interfacing that I know can essentially do something very similar. And I would say there are probably a lot of people that would swear by, what am I doing? I'm cutting fabric paper with my fabric scissors. There are a lot of people that would swear by even a stabilizer. I know that there's some iron on stabilizers that will work too.

Like if you're into embroidery that could be another option. This is what I love and this is what works for me. So if there's any other materials you'd like to use, certainly share, give us a comment because I know there's lots of different things that can do the same thing. So then what I'm gonna do is here's the one caveat that I do have to tell you, when you're working with wool and with felt, you have to be careful of your heat setting because you could melt it very quickly. So I'm actually on blasted hot and I should turn it down just a little bit here, but in theory, all you wanna do, I'm gonna flip it over is you'll probably be able to start to see, yep.

Do you see how it's, maybe you can't, how it's melting to the wool? I'm just doing it right on our table, which maybe is probably not the best choice, but this is gonna work for me today. Okay, see, now it's attached. So once this cools, you're able to back this parchment, which we will in a second, it's a little hot to the touch, but I like to cut out my shape first because I like the extra sturdiness of this parchment that just remains on it. So I am going to just give it a few pins so that you get the idea.

Ooh, there we go. And then I'm just gonna cut around it. So when I'm cutting out shapes, I like to kind of break out the shapes into different shapes within the shape, because I think it makes it easy to cut. So here's the stem. And you can, if you really want to, you can even go farther beyond.

You don't even have to cut exactly to your pattern if you really don't want to. Denise is asking if it leaves a residue on your fabric, it will, that's exactly what it's supposed to do. But it's the backside of the fabric. I should have maybe specified that, you're ironing this onto the back side of your fabric, because it's essentially like you're gonna glue your fabric to your other piece of fabric, but it's not thick. There's no substantiality to it.

It's just a matter of making sure that it gets stuck. And I know last week I was kind of saying, oh, I don't really usually pin that much. And a lot of times, the reason I love to work with felt, and the reason I love to kind of play with these kinds of fabrics is because oftentimes, old felt boards, felt sticks to felt and you don't need to pin things, when I'm doing something a little bit more intricate like this, this is just sort of my way to still not have to pin while getting it nice and straight so that it doesn't move in the sewing machine, if that makes sense. But yeah so the idea is that it will leave a little bit of a residue, which I'm gonna try and show you when I peel back the paper part. It's called heat and bond.

I think heat and bond is literally like dollars per yard. It comes on a bolt and I think at Joanne's or Michael's or any big box store it's by the interfacing, it's very, it's awesome. It's by, I think it's a, I don't know what product it is actually. I don't, I'm unsure. I feel like it's a, well, yeah, it's a great product.

I use it for multiple different things. You can tell that I'm not being ultra precise with my cutting, because this is a fern leaf or maybe this isn't a fern leaf. Maybe this is more of like a eucalyptus leaf. I don't know, it's a leaf that came out of my dreaming up a flower pillow. There we go, get away some of that bulk.

These scissors, I'm just gonna give a tiny little plug for these scissors. These are my most favorite fabric scissors on the face of the planet. They're LDH scissors. And it's this amazing company that they hand make these scissors. And these things are, first of all, they're like rainbow shimmer, but they're so amazing.

They're cutting through this wool is like butter. So there is nothing and I'm sure I can get an amen in here. There's nothing like having a good, nice pair of shears to cut your fabric with. And I've learned that the hard way when I cut with wool and felt, I love these scissors so much. So here we go.

So I'm gonna take this off and if you need to, you can trim up. See it is a little bit chunkier. It is a tiny but chunkier than the pattern itself, but I mean, not by much, right? And if you need to, you can trim up like here's one little corner right here that I'm just gonna give a little tiny trim to, but it looks good to me. So here's what this is gonna do.

This is what your back looks like with that substrate. And this is a, oh, wonder under yes wonder under is the other name of, it's like a similar thing, heat and bond and wonder under is I think it's the exact same thing. So essentially here we go, see it watch, well, because it's ironed to your fabric once you peel this away, do you see how there's like a shiny residue here? This is what will melt with your iron and become like the glue. So yes, it leaves a residue, but look at how still floppy.

There's no substantiality to it. This specific product is called heat and bond, but wonder under, I believe does the exact same thing. See, so it's just my same thing. It's a little bit shiny here, which is the glue and then, watch this. I'm going to, it might be beneficial for this step to have all of your pieces already cut out, but I'm just still gonna show you what my, I'm dropping felt everywhere.

So here's gonna be my flower, just so I'm just gonna give us sort of an idea and I'm gonna do the flower here and I'm gonna lay it a little bit over top of this. So I would say that's probably gonna be about the spot. I would normally have this all cut out. And so I could lay all my pieces at one time, but just so you get an idea because watch this. So this is where it is, right?

This is where I want it to be. And then, and it's just there, but when I heat it up and again, just be sure you're not using your crazy, crazy, crazy hot setting because I don't want it to melt. This is 100% wool and I would hate for it to all of a sudden shrink up, but look it, oh, spoke too soon. I think, I think and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe with wonder under, you can use steam to set it. I don't know that I can do that with heat and bond but maybe I can, and I just never have super looked into it.

Oh, this is gonna take a bit to totally set. Just because it's going through, this is a pretty thick, you can see how thick it is right here. I'm already loving this green color onto this mustard backdrop. This is gonna match my living room just perfectly. Yes, this is the fun part about doing these projects is kind of watching it all come together, which I really, really love.

Well, it's not quite, it's starting to stick, but it's not quite there. I turn it up just a notch. I have a very old janky iron, which I really, really love. I know there's a lot of really nicer irons out there on the market, but I've tried 'em and this thing is, it's a tried and true. I would love to hear if anybody's made any other of the pillow tutorials.

Start to stick. Just gonna leave it on for a few seconds. I just got a question. Do you have a suggestion for what you can trace? Oh, that's a super good idea, tracing.

I love that idea. Yeah why, oh, here we go. I would say here is what I say when people are like, I'm not artistic or I can't draw, first of all, I totally debunk that. I think everybody can write, I think everybody's handwriting is gorgeous and it is such an insight into your personality. And I think we cherish handwriting when it's something that we can learn to cherish, 'cause it's part of people's personalities.

However, if you're feeling like, oh my gosh, I wanna do a mermaid or a dinosaur. Here's what I would challenge you with. Go on to Google and go Google a drawing or a picture of a dinosaur or a mermaid or a train or a whatever. Maybe pick something simple to start with like a lightning bolt or a wave or a whale or the letter E 'cause your last name is Engelbreson, I don't know whatever it is. Something simple, start with something simple.

Start with something kind of chunky and big. And then look at, see, it's starting to stick. I can't even pull it away and then look at the lines and just do your best to try and draw it from the screen. Now, if you're like, oh my word, this is the worst thing on the planet. If you have an iPad or a tablet, just put your paper right on top of it and try and trace it.

That's as simple as that. Or just start with something simple, start with something chunky, start with something you love. Start with something that's outside your door or that you have in your kitchen or your dining room or your living room, because that's gonna be probably the easiest thing. And it's gonna give you inspiration. And I love to craft for other people.

So I feel like if you are like, oh my gosh, my best friend loves diet Coke. Do a diet Coke can, do a La Croix can, do a La Croix can and somebody show me that they have done a La Croix. How funny would that be? A La Croix applique. Maybe I need to do that.

Okay so that took a little bit, but look it. Here is the idea of it. Oh this one isn't super, super crazy stuck, but the idea is there. See how all this is stuck. So all it did is see, it's just glued.

One of them isn't super duper glued down, but you'll get the idea and it's gonna be good enough. I could, I would probably be a little bit more patient with it, but I don't wanna make you wait while I iron for 100 years. So this is a pillow, pre-done pillow form. So if I was not doing a pre-done pillow form, all I would be doing is using just the front of the pillow form. I wouldn't be, I wouldn't have it already sewn together.

So with that said, I'm gonna bring my sewing machine into this part. So I'm only sewing the top, 'cause wouldn't that be a travesty if I don't do that. Oh, Tracy's saying she loves this process. She might try it with a word. Yes this word hooray I actually did a banner for my daughter's room that says joy, joy, joy because she's just this little joyful girl.

And I kind of wanted those words spoken over to her while we were rocking her as a baby. So she has a banner in her room that has that has that on it and then I also, which I probably should have grabbed. I also have another banner that I've done this on that has the words you are beautiful. I just am a firm believer in whatever you speak over your kids and whatever is in their room and that they see daily is something that is for their life, for the future. So I wanted her to, and it's colorful and happy of course, full of pink colors.

So I'm gonna bring my machine over here so you can see. Now here is the way that I applique. There's 100 different stitches that come on so many different machines. And there's, I've always said when it comes to sewing, when it comes to crafting, there's a million different ways to do the same exact thing. So what I'm gonna do and you can totally do zigzags.

You could do a satin stitch right along the edge. That's more of a traditional applique is when you have this sort of really, really, really tight satin stitch right along the edge. This is what I love to do because I love to see the raw edges of these words, 'cause I'm just gonna run my stitching along the very edge about like I would say top stitch it right along the very edge here because that's how I love the look of it. Now it would be my goal to try and start and go all the way around without stopping. So I'm just gonna go slow.

And then anytime I get to a corner, keep my needle down, lift the foot, but my needle stays down so I can just pivot. And I'm just following my outline of my leaf. And you would just do the same, follow the outline of your letter, turn when you need to, lift when you need to, go slow. So then the very last, I didn't say this in the beginning, I'm going to on my machine, there's a way to tap down. You can do, you can back stitch, but I don't want that bulk of that extra stitching.

So I'm just gonna push the button and it's gonna tack down slowly to get me a lock stitch. It's called a lock stitch. I believe that's what it's called on every machine. So here we go. Whoops.

I cut my scissors button and voila. 'Cause then it just moved my machine out. I can show you, you see that? And it has this really cute fuchsia color right around the edges. I mean, how great is this?

I love, love, love it. There we go. So then my next step, all you're gonna do is continue with the same process. Now, if I, like I said before, I would've probably cut all my pieces out at one time, laid them out so I could have seen, and you're gonna layer the background. So if you have anything like similar to this pillow, you see how the R is on top of the O and the A, so I laid all of these out.

I knew, okay I wanted to overlap some of 'em. I didn't wanna just overlap them perfectly. I wanted some to be in the foreground or the background. And the foreground is what's closest to you. Background is obviously what's behind it.

And so I was able to, I pulled the R off. So I stitched my, I stitched actually my O and my A first and I was able to kind of pin it in place or, 'cause I didn't use heat and bond with this. I was able to pin it in place and go, okay, this is where I want this to be because I laid the whole word out and I'm gonna do the same. So this is obviously where I want this to be. And then next I'm gonna lay this so that it overlaps a little bit like this right here.

This leaf will overlap this flower right here. So yay. This is just a fun way to add any sort of personality, color, excitement, texture to your pillows. And this is a store bought pillow, but if you want the instructions on how to do the pillow cover in a very simple, easy way without a zipper that is on that PDF pattern that I have for, I'm sorry, that is on the four PDF patterns. It is in all the actual patterns that we have.

So this is what I'm starting with. I'm gonna continue going with it. I would love to see what you're making and what you are doing with these pillows or how you're making them your own with whether it's the tassels or the pompoms or this applique, I would love, love, love to see. So be sure to tag me 'cause I really wanna see, I have one last comment here. Audrey says, I think I saw a video where the applique was a scrap fabric and put the whole thing together, cut it out and sewed it on as a project in one piece, that is another way to do it where you're actually sewing it all together and then you sew it right on top.

Scraps would be really fun to challenge yourself on how to cut different things with scraps. That would be really, really cool, but that is another way to do it. If you wanna sew these individual letters together and then you can applique on as a whole. That's fine too. I mean, I like to work piece by piece because I kind of like to treat it as a pattern, as a painting sort of as I go, which is really fun.

But thank you guys for joining along. This has been a really fun four weeks and I've loved talking with people and hearing the ways that you are going to customize and make these patterns. And I cannot wait. Somebody last week said that they were gonna make a mermaid scale pillow from the scallops that we made from the ice cream. And I can't wait to see these, they are gonna be amazing.

And I think anytime you can sit down at your sewing machine or sit down at your table and create something colorful is a great day. So thank you for joining me. Again if you wanna find those PDFs, grab them in the banner below or in the description, depending on where you're watching and tag me, tag me, tag me, tag me in all the stuff that you're making, 'cause I really, really wanna see. Again, my handle is Oh Yay Studio and I'm Emily. Thanks so much for joining us, we'll see you soon.