Blog Swap: starring Dresden

I'm happy to have Dresden, from dresdencarrie.com, sharing her talents with us today for our Blog Swap! She was sweet enough to share a tutorial with all of us, for a darling {LOVE} pillow. Enjoy!

Hi all you wonderful Shannon Sews readers, my name is Dresden and I have a blog called dresdencarrie.

Shannon and I are doing a little blog swap and I wanted to share a quick tutorial with you.

But first, here's a little more about me. I work for Silhouette as a graphic designer and absolutely love my job! I post on my blog in my free time and wish I had a little more time to do so. I love sewing and blogging. Of course I love browsing Pinterest, come see my page and see all the things I love.

I hope you'll stop by my blog and take a look around!

This tutorial shows how to make a really cute pillow using the Silhouette SD machine, but you could easily do this without it. Just replace the next few steps with tracing the letters onto your fabric.

The fabric interfacing from Silhouette is one of my favorite products...hopefully this tutorial will give you an idea of why I love it so much!

Use the Silhouette Studio software to type out your letters and choose your font, 

I used American Typewriter.

Then iron the interfacing to the back of your fabric, remove the paper backing

and put the piece on your cutting mat.

Here are the letters after I cut them out, I love how crisp the edges turn out. Not to mention how super duper fast it is to cut them out compared to cutting them out by hand. This can easily be done by hand too, just print out your letters, trace them on or pin on and cut out.

The Silhouette doesn't cut burlap so I cut a piece of burlap large enough for each letter. If your pillow is going to be used a lot (like on your couch or around kids) I probably wouldn't recommend burlap, it frays very easily.

Iron on each letter to the burlap, the interfacing has a double sided adhesive which makes it very easy to get your pieces in the right place.

Trim around the edges, but not too close, yet.

Cut your backing fabric to the size you want and pin each letter in place.

I sewed around both sides of the burlap and also through the middle of the letters.

This is what your piece should look like once they are all sewn on, trim the excess burlap

I chose to use an envelope closure for my pillow, cut 2 pieces of fabric. The height should be the same as the front piece, and the width is about 1/2 the width plus 4". My front piece was 17" x 17" so my 2 pieces are 17" x 12". Iron along the long edge and sew down.

Place first piece right side down with finished seam toward the middle.

Lay the second piece face down with finished seam toward the middle.



Pin in place and sew around all four edges. Turn right side out and put pillow form in.

And you're done!

I love the coordinating back piece!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, come stop by my blog and say hi!

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