Decorate: Raven Pillow

Another new pillow for the library. Like the skull pillow, this one is also an appliqué, but is more of the standard style: a shape cut out and ironed-on and sewn in place.

Just a simple picture of the appliqué in progress. I had barely enough of the gray-swirls-on-black fabric! I actually had to patch a couple of bits together to make it work (hardly visible), but it was the best choice from the stash and, as usual, I wanted to work on it now. I used heavy-duty two-sided interfacing and, with a dry, hot iron, applied it to the back of the fabric.

After I cut out the raven outline*, I decided which direction I wanted it to face, stuck it down and traced. (Probably obvious, but it will face the opposite direction once it's applied.)

The case fabric turned out to be a little resistant to the iron-on, so I had to sew all the way around the raven with a tiny zigzag stitch. (I did this before I finished sewing up the sides of the case, which is a sham-style, with a flat overlapped opening on the back.) Speaking of the cases themselves: I haven't shown the steps I follow to make them. If there is an interest, I can write up a tutorial the next time I make a pillow.

There is no real theme to the fabrics, in case you're wondering, unless "I had it in my stash" is a theme. (My current goal is to try and use what I already have for as many projects as possible. Buying fabric out here is a major pain as well.) I'm for all the fabrics used in the library to have a touch of gold somewhere in the pattern, but that's pretty much the extent of it.

*New uses for old things
Surprise! The raven image is actually a pumpkin-carving pattern I downloaded about four years ago. So glad I did, because I don't think it's on the Pumpkin Lady site anymore.(I have a warning on My Halloween Links site, reminding people to download/save/print things of interest, because there is no guarantee they'll be available later. I'm very glad I took my own advice!) Any pattern that doesn't have a lot of detail would probably work. Now I want to do a spooky tree. That shouldn't be too tough to work out!