Crest Pillow

For Christmas, I designed a crest for my boyfriend, and embroidered it onto a throw pillow for him. I'm really proud of how it turned out, and he loved it! He loved his crest, especially after my explanation to him, and he was really jazzed about the soft flannel green-army-man background. He said he even detected a note of "pillow-envy" in his stepmom.

To make this project happen, I designed the crest in Illustrator, pulling together pieces of his personality (ie, raspberry beret because he loves 80s music and because he loves taking French classes). I printed out the final design, and used a thin sharpie to trace it onto a piece of Sulky brand water-soluble stabilizer- it doesn't do much in the way of stabilizing, but it's basically clear plastic that you can draw all over and then completely dissolve in water. It's great!! I basted that onto some plain bleached cotton muslin, and got to embroidering.

I wasn't sure when I started the project if I was going to use any kind of trim or not, but when I asked a friend if the pillow needed a ruffle or not, she reminded me that piping was a thing. I went with the piping, and it turned out way better for him than a ruffle would have.

Glove Darning

About this time last winter, I taught myself how to darn by watching youtube tutorial videos. My first project was a small hole that had ripped in the heel of some otherwise good-condition smartwool socks, which turned out really great, and thankfully, I'm still wearing those $20 socks.

The second project was a spot on a glove thumb where the knitted material had worn out, a little trickier because the surrounding fabric was definitely worn as well. I couldn't find a good color match in normal sock yarn at the store, so I used some beige cotton (I think) yarn that I was given a couple years ago. Not a perfect match, but my then-brand new boyfriend was over the moon he didn't have to throw away his gloves.

This winter I became a glove doctor again, this time for the index finger (wearing out, like the thumb had), as well as re-anchoring the patch on the thumb to the leather, as it was becoming almost totally detached. First I made the new patch, being sure this time to anchor it to some of the stitches attaching the leather pads to the glove, and then I got some brown thread and worked it through the sewing machine holes made with the original glove stitching as well as the weave of the darned patch I made last winter.

Once again, over the moon!