How the Grinch...Became a Pillow!?!

My hero, the Grinch. At least he WAS my hero back in my retail days, when trying to get through overlapping Hallowe'en and Christmas merchandising seasons with some sanity while dealing with stressed-out customers. [shudder]

These days my old pal still makes me smile, though. Last year my wife picked up for me a Grinch t-shirt she saw at a thrift shop; it was too small to wear, but I thought I might try to do something decor-ish with it. This year in Pandemic Retirement, sticking to my goal of trying to do something creative every day, today the Grinch t-shirt became a pillow.

Tip: If you don't want to deal with making a quilt to preserve old favorite t-shirts, this is a faster and, from what I'm told, a much less painful way to utilize them.

PREPPING THE PARTS

I started by smoothing out the shirt face up on the cutting table and trimming away everything 2" outside the motif on the front (the back of the shirt becomes the back of the pillow). While rooting through our trim stash, I found a piece of white cotton premade piping...just enough for the pillow if I rounded the corners, so I rounded the corners. To make that curve, I inverted a drinking glass over each corner, traced the curve and cut it...simple!

To give the t-shirt a bit more body and a smoother appearance as a pillow cover, I decided to back it with a layer of cotton quilt batting, in this case a leftover piece of Warm & Natural. If you're trying to use up leftover supplies like I am, just use what you have. I placed the cut t-shirt section on top of a double layer of batting (which had also been stacked with a double layer of muslin to make a removable pillow insert), and cut through all layers using the shirt section as a guide. This gave me a front and back section of both the batting and the muslin.

MAKING THE PILLOW INSERT

Using the two stacked muslin pieces, I stitched around them, leaving a 6" opening at the bottom for turning and stuffing. After turning the muslin right-side-out, I inserted polyester fiberfill (placing small pieces at a time to avoid a lumpy effect, and smoothing them out as I went along) and then closed the opening with a row of machine stitching along the edge. I used up the contents of three partially-filled bags of fiberfill...all small amounts...clearing more leftover supplies!

CREATING THE PILLOW COVER

To give the front of the pillow form some slight dimension interest and to hold the t-shirt fabric in place on the batting, I stacked the t-shirt front section and batting and outline-stitched around each of the squares in the Grinch design using a slightly longer stitch length. These squares were small, and I pinned on both sides of each line to keep the fabric in place as the outlines were stitched. This type of stitching can also be used to enhance the design of your t-shirt, and may give the pillow front a quilt-like effect. (I did no stitching on the pillow back stacked on the remaining piece of batting, but that is also an option...get creative!)

Tip: If your t-shirt's design is larger, you may want to use a walking foot or even-feed foot on the machine to prevent bunching or slipping of the upper fabric as you stitch.

Next, I pinned the premade piping in place on the right side of the pillow front, overlapping the ends at the bottom of the pillow front.

Using a zipper foot, I stitched the piping to the pillow front right over the stitching the manufacturer used to create the piping.

Next, I pinned the pillow back to the pillow front, right sides together, from the pillow front side. This allowed me to stitch the front to the back using again the same stitching line that attached the piping. I left most of the bottom open for inserting the pillow form.

After turning the pillow cover right-side out, I stuffed in the custom pillow insert and fussed with it a bit, smoothing it out and working it into the rounded corners. Next, I pinned the opening at the bottom closed, turning in the raw edges, and slip-stitched it...by hand. (Are you shocked by DTFM doing hand sewing?? Well, there are certain times when it's appropriate. Very few certain times.)

It was fun to finally get something created with this old t-shirt, and to use up leftover muslin, batting, piping and polyfill in the process. The pillow looks great placed on a chair next to the Christmas tree in our den, near all the Santas and snowmen, don't you think?

2020 MASKS, PART 2

My previous blog post was devoted to 2020 mask-making, and clearly we'll need to wear them for some time to come. If we need to wear masks, why can't they be fun? Especially at Christmas! In addition to making the Grinch pillow, I also created a mask with a Santa beard after a friend showed me something available online. For the base I used the roomier singer's mask format I had used to make masks for my church choral singers...no mouthful of fabric when breathing! Here is the link to the mask tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNCAoPDBVKc&t=7s

(The mask is wrinkled in the image below from being hand laundered and not ironed afterward. Ironing a mask? Not me!)

That's the latest from the DTFM Sewing Studio. Until next time, I challenge YOU to do something creative every day, and keep those sewing machines humming! (And be safe...wear your mask, wash your hands and observe social distance!)

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@danthefabricman

danthefabricman@yahoo.com