4th December: Embroidering Pillow Cases

I'll be honest: I'm not the most experienced embroiderer in the world, but when I decided to give the Man a couple of pillow cases for his birthday, I wanted to personalise them and a bit of stitching seemed to be the answer! If pillow cases sounds like an odd present, I will say that firstly, they were a bit of an in-joke to go with his real gift, secondly, I gave him the pillows to go inside as well, and thirdly that we use them all the time. Winning!

In fact, I'm really pleased with how they turned out, and I would definitely do this again.  They make great gifts, with a handcrafted, personal touch, and would be lovely for Christmas, birthdays, or even weddings.

I started off writing little templates of the words I wanted to embroider onto each pillow.  When I was happy, I cut out the templates, and washi-taped them in place on the inside of the pillow case.  I believe this is not a traditional embroidery technique, but it worked, and the washi tape peeled off without leaving a mark. 

My pillow cases were navy, and so to see my template through the material, I had to press them against the brightly-lit window.  I traced over the words straight onto the material.  With a white gel pen, because that's what I had available.  Again, non-traditional...

All that remained was the stitching!  I used light-coloured blue thread to stand out against the background, and used 3 strands of embroidery cotton at a time 

The finished project!  These didn't take long to make, and having tried this once, I think it would be even quicker next time.  I'm really pleased with how these turned out and they have turned out to be very useful indeed.  And it's nice to have that little special touch that's personal to us :D

Are you hand-making any gifts this Christmas?

Kisses xxx

P.S. This post is part of a series connected to Journal Your Christmas, an online class run by Shimelle with a focus on capturing Christmas memories.  Tonight it's off to my Guide unit and we've got a Christmas craft in store!