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.