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Valentine's Day Pillow Project

© Peggy Pechacek

Happy Valentine's Day!

This month I'll guide you through creating your own Valentine pillow. For my cross stitch design, I used Lizzie Kate's Bee Mine. You can find this free LK design at Stitchville USA in their January newsletter. (The newsletter is available online in .pdf file format which means you will need to have a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader.) I also found this design scanned in at PhotoPoint.

Once you have your completed design, you are ready to make your pillow. The dimensions of the pillow can be easily changed to custom fit your favorite cross stitch project.

For the LK Bee Mine design, I made a pillow 8" by 6 3/4". With the strips that frame the design, I ended up with a front opening of approximately 5" x 3 3/4", which was perfect for my design.

Materials

All the following dimensions include a 1/4" seam allowance.

You will need:

• two 8 1/2" x 7 1/4" pieces of fabric (one for back and one for inside front)
• two 3 1/2" x 8 1/2" strips of fabric (for front horizontal)
• two 3 1/2" x 7 1/4" strips of fabric (for front vertical)

To make a 6 inch pillow, cut two 6 1/2" x 6 1/2" pieces of fabric for the inside front and back. The four front strips will be cut 3 1/2" x 6 1/2". The opening for your cross stitch piece will be 3" x 3".

For a 14 inch pillow, the front and back pieces need to be cut 14 1/2" x 14 1/2". The four strips need to be cut 4 1/2" x 14 1/2". This will give you an opening of 10" x 10" for your cross stitch piece.

You will also need polyester fiberfill and four buttons or bows for the corners (optional).

Putting it together

Follow these directions to put your pillow together.

• Fold the four strips lengthwise with the wrong sides together and press.
• Place your back fabric piece right side up. Put the two horizontal strips on top of the back piece. Raw edges of the strips should meet the raw edges of the back.
• Place the other two strips vertically on top of the two previous strips. Once again, the raw edges of the strips should meet the raw edges of the back fabric.
• Pin in place and sew together.
• Place the inside front fabric piece right side up.
• Place the back with the strips right side down on top of the inside piece. The strips will be sandwiched inside.

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