Embroidered Anniversary Pillow

The husband's grandparents were celebrating their 60th anniversary.  That's something worth celebrating!  60 years is no easy feat.

First, I scoured Pinterest for some ideas.  I saw some cute personalized anniversary subway signs which inspired me to make a pillow version of it.  Off to JoAnn's we go!

There were so many great fabrics to choose from!  I settled on the following fabric selection.  A nice Fall upholstery print for the pillow, a cream bottom weight for the embroidery fabric, and three coordinating embroidery thread colors. 

Next step was to create the embroidered words.  I downloaded a 30-day trial version of BuzzWords.  This application easily converts fonts into embroidery fonts.

BuzzWords application in action

After I was happy with the wording, I transferred the embroidery from my laptop to my sewing machine.

Getting ready to do some embroidering

Here's a picture of my bottom weight fabric, the 360x200mm hoop, and some tear-away stabilizer.

The supplies

My stabilizer and fabric all hooped and ready to go!

I pressed the 'START' button and let the magic begin.  It took about 1 hour for it to finish embroidering.  It was a very nerve-racking hour, too.  I was so worried something would go horribly, horribly wrong!

The start of the embroidering..

Almost done with the green font!

Here is how it looked after it was done embroidering.  I had to go through and cut all the jump stitches.

Look at all those jump stitches!

It didn't turn out perfect.  There's lots of puckering... I think next time I'll use a twill fabric and a cut-away stabilizer.  (Every project is a great learning experience.)

Now, it's time to make the pillow cover.  I folded and pressed the sides in about 1 1/2 inches. 

I cut the pillow fabric into a 26"x26" square giving it a 1" seam allowance.  Then I lined and pinned the embroidery to the center of the pillow fabric.  Once it's all lined and pinned, take it to the sewing machine and sew a straight-stitch down both sides.

Then sew around the perimeter of the pillow fabric to close it up.  Make sure to leave 3/4 of one side open so that you can stuff your pillow form inside of it.

Sew around the pillow fabric.

All ready to be stuffed!

Here is the finished product!