Santa Pillow – how to make it yourself

Here’s another quick project for Christmas that I worked up last weekend. The pillow isn’t complete but it will be before Christmas – maybe even before next weekend if I’m industrious!

It’s not complicated, it doesn’t take long, it’s simple and cute without being fussy. It would be a great project for a beginner – maybe someone who is visiting for the holidays and wants to learn to do a few stitches and make something festive.

You will need

1. Fabric that has a pattern made up of large individual shapes. (This fabric is from IKEA but I’ve seen loads on the Internet at fabric shops. Those of you who have access to proper fabric shops will be sure to find something that will work.)

2. Medium weight canvas of heavy cotton for the body of the pillow

3. Red, green and black thread. Floche a broder or cotton floss will both work and aren’t expensive.

4. Sewing machine and white sewing thread

First cut out the shape you want to use from the fabric you’ve chosen. Leave a border of about 1 inch/ 2-3 cm around the shape as you cut it out.

Cut the front of the pillow shape to the size you want it to be. Be sure to leave at least 1 inch/2.5 cm for the seam allowance!

Place the cut out piece of fabric onto the pillow front and pin in place. I’ve put mine off to one side so the words “Ho!Ho!Ho!” can be stitched next to the Santa. You could also stitch little snow flakes or miniature Christmas trees.

Pin the shape in place on the pillow top. Using a zig-zag stitch on your machine, sew the shape to the fabric. This might need to be done by an adult if you’re making this with a child.

Next stitch button hole (or blanket) stitch all around the edge of the shape. Don’t place the stitches too close together for a more rustic look. I used 3 strands of floche a broder in bright red for this Santa.

Now it’s time to draw the words (or the snow flakes or miniature trees) onto the fabric. First I drew free hand my “Ho! Ho! Ho!” onto a piece of white paper using a pencil and then going over it with a thin marker when I was happy with how it looked.  I then put the fabric on top of the paper and traced the words with a pencil onto the fabric. Since the body of the pillow is white, I didn’t need a light box. This really is an easy project and quick!

For the letters I used stem stitch and 3 strands of black cotton. Chain stitch would also work for letters. For snowflakes, you could use straight stitches and for a little Christmas tree, fly stitch would work with French knots for the decorations.

The fabric I’ve chosen has multiple images of Santa Claus on it so I’ll be making a few more pillow tops this week (I hope!) Here’s a peek at a few of them.

The one above will have miniature Christmas trees next to him or maybe three medium sized ones…

And this one will have snowflakes – probably fanciful red snowflakes!

For a clean more modern look I’d make the pillows all white without any trim or border. If I was going to make them a bit cozier, I might add red pom pom trim to the one with snowflakes. The one that will have Christmas trees embroidered next to the Santa might be trimmed with dark green cord.

Have you any ideas? Do you do quick little projects like this at Christmas? Tell us about them!

You might also like:

This entry was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2011 at 07:30. It is filed under Embroidery, Santa Pillow and tagged with Embroidery, Santa Pillow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.