The High Life Scenery

tronic:

A few weeks ago, Joel donated bone marrow to an anonymous 60 year old woman with myodysplastic syndrome. The Bone Marrow program (Be The Match) suggested he bring a pillow to the hospital to put behind his back on the drive home for his comfort. While the pillow that I was inspired to make is more of a comfort item than a back pillow, Whaley (inspired by the Vineyard Vines logo) has carved a warm place in our hearts!

Whaley’s Birth

Heart

Inspired by the hearts that you stuff into your bear at Build-A-Bear Workshop, I created a heart for Whaley. I drew up a template of a heart on a piece of cardboard and then cut out two identical pieces in pink felt.

I pinned the front and back of the heart together. I threaded the sewing machine with a bright pink thread (just for fun!) and selected a straight stitch.

I sewed the heart almost all the way around then turned it inside out and stuffed it. I hand sewed the remainder of the heart to close it off.

Voila! A heart full of love for Whaley.

Whale

Next, I drew templates for the shape of the whale in proportion to the Vineyard Vines logo. The grid template was about 18”-20” wide and 6-8” tall. I placed the template on the felt (pink for the front and navy for the back) and added 2” around the entire template to provide for seam allowance and, well, for potential mistakes on my end. I thought it would be too big but it ended up being perfect!

Before I sewed on the piping and the gusset, I added Whaley’s facial features. I let my sister select a navy blue button for the eye. For the smile and eyebrow, I wrapped a pipe cleaner in navy fabric and used hot glue to bind it together. Cut your fabric two inches longer than the pipe cleaner. It does not need to be very wide however you can always trim it later if you have excess fabric. Place the pipecleaner exactly in the middle of the blue fabric (long-ways) so that there is an inch of excess fabric on either side of the pipecleaner. The pipecleaner should be as close as possible to the edge of the long side of the fabric. I laid a stripe of hot glue along the pipe cleaner and wrapped the fabric tightly around. Leave about an inch of fabric off the end of the pipe cleaner without any hot glue. (This is important for sewing the ends down later.) This process was logistically tricky but it looked a little like this…

I sewed on the button with a few stitches for the eye. For the mouth and eyebrow, take your pieces of pipecleaner wrapped in fabric and fold down the edge of the fabric so that when you sew over it, there won’t be any stray ends. For the mouth, abut this piece to the edge of Whaley’s pink side where his mouth should go. Sew over the edge a few times (I did this part by hand) to anchor it in place. The beauty of the pipecleaner is that I was able to bend it to make the mouth however I wanted! I made small hand stitches as close to the pipecleaner as possible all the way around the pipecleaner. I repeated this process for the dimple and the eyebrow for a total of three separate pieces. (Remember that those should start out smaller to begin with; keep the same 1” fabric allowance though!) Phew! That was the trickiest part of this whole project.

On to the rest of the body…

We have two pieces for the front and back of the whale as shown above. I also wanted to add some depth to the whale so it was more of a pillow than just a stuffed animal. For this reason I added a navy blue gusset. The gusset was a few inches wide and about 40 inches long (give or take…I didn’t measure it but I know it was longer than my one yard piece of navy fleece!). For mine, I needed to sew two pieces together to make it long enough. In order to get a clean seam, follow the instructions in this video at 2:30: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpvN5Z5hHrY.

Next I added the piping. I began by sewing the piping (I bought it premade from the fabric store) to the pink/front of the whale. Place the piping along the edge of the pink fleece with the opening facing the outside of the whale. The round pipe should be furthest inside. Using a pink thread again, I sewed on the bottom piece of the piping as close to the round as I could get. Around each corner, it was really helpful to cut slits in the white fabric of the piping to get the edges and curves as round as possible.

All the way around and we get (plus the mouth/eyebrow/dimple which I added later):

I repeated this process for the back piece of navy fleece.

The next step was to attach the gusset. I placed the gusset to the edge of the navy back so that both fuzzy sides were facing in. I then sewed the opposite side of the piping to the gusset like so…

I repeated this with the pink fleece too so that all three pieces are sewn together with their fuzzy sides facing in. Leave a gap a few inches wide when sewing the navy to the gusset to leave room to turn the pillow.

We’re nearly finished! Turn the whale inside out and stuff! Don’t forget to add his heart about halfway through the stuffing process!

When you have finished stuffing him (the more stuff and fluff the better!) hand sew close to the piping to seal him up!

Welcome to the world Whaley!

a new fresh look for this week. im digging the oranges. theyre really happy looking. and they repeat really well.

YUM.