early bird/night owl reversible pillow for my Thing 2

At long last, this pillow has finally jumped out of my head and into real life. I've intended for a very long while to make my girls a fun accent pillows for their beds. They have repeatedly requested them.

I just didn't intend to make this one. I had decided to make a quick, simple animal pillow (think circle with ears) for Thing 2 since she's a bit younger, loves animals and would really dig that. And then the usual descent into madness:

Ooh, might as well make that reversible early bird/night owl pillow I sketched!

With woven applique! Felt applique! 3D elements! Hand embroidery! Trims! Poms!

And pockets! And removable accessories!

In fabulous perfect colors but all from the stash!

So after drafting/sweating/squinting/doubting/rethinking/redrafting (but having fun doing it in the weird way that we do) I'm really happy with the finished pillow! And I must say, Thing 2 freaked out over it in a very gratifying manner. She has been hanging around the craft studio daily. Standing at my shoulder, practically vibrating, saying 'Is it finished yet? Can I have it?'

The early bird gets the worm, of course. I guess the worm may not realize its precarious position, judging by its clueless little smile.

The night owl gets a mouse in a pocket NO too cluttered

mouse in its beak NO bit too gruesome

pocket watch! Of course. Look at that late hour. Tsk tsk, Night Owl.
(We are keeping the little green mouse to play with, though. He's cute.)

View from top of owl/bottom of bird showing both sides coming together. I thought about doing a gusset for the sides instead. Nah. It would be more trouble, plus might make the poms look weird.

Happy accident. The owl's eyebrows make nice bird feet. While I did design the pom plume on the bird to also make the owl's feet, I have to admit I didn't think about the bird feet until I started taking photos. Duh. On the next one I'll have to exaggerate it some to get it to work.

You can see the progression of the idea on these very professional and organized scraps of paper from the last two years (the ones I can find anyway). Cheese-shaped sticky notes – the choice of designers everywhere. There are two versions of on my computer too, the latest being the one I made. Now I don't have to worry: the pattern is digitized and backed up in triplicate.

I think Early Bird/Night Owl would make a nice pattern for the shop, so I'm adding it to my list. Or I might explore doing a Spoonflower pre-printed version? Something you could just cut out, add felt accents, sew and stuff? I've wanted to try Spoonflower for so long. I have some Twelve Days tea towels in progress for Spoonflower too. Oh, for more time in the day, people.

So next up is another fun project, a fur accent pillow for my Thing 1. She wants a bright, shaggy one with a stinkface. Giving me stinkfaces is her specialty, so she wanted the pillow to match. (To make a stinkface, stand in front of a mirror and bring your brows as far down over your eyes as you can while simultaneously frowning up into your nose. It's very attractive. Use them whenever your mother asks you to do something.)

We've ordered turquoise shag fur and I'm thinking through the best way to give the pillow a grumpy expression with sewn tucks. That's going to be a fun one too! Reversible! And with a happy expression on the other side, don't you think?

what I'm up to

Making something fun. Just playing. Digging in the compacted stash piles. Poking through my ribbons. Opening drawers to see what I have. This idea has lived in my head for a great long while and now it's becoming real. It's changing as I go. I'm always fascinated with the process of bringing an idea to life.

My sketches always seem to have more appeal to me than the final product. Does that happen to you? Maybe it's the potential that makes them so attractive. The final product is never exactly like the sketch or the phantom in my head, but sometimes they are better. Other times just...no. However, it's that over-confident feeling that the end product is going to be fantasmic that keeps me going.

In other news: Spring break was fun. We got away to the beach. This is the girls sharing a drink. Like two angry badgers arm wrestling. Feeling like it's the home stretch on home schooling. 5th and 7th grades almost in the bag. Can I get an ay-men? I'm hoping that this academic year can end earlier than other years. We usually school from September through mid-July but this year is different because we were on the Konos schedule and we've logged a lot more days than we usually have by now. A longer summer than usual...oh what will I do? *throatclearingthatsoundslikeornaments*

hello, lover

Oh I love you, my DMC darling.

Every pretty pretty floss color available...

...and you are not printed. Nooo.
You have actual floss samples. Be still my heart!

OK, I'll stop being all weird about the floss color guide. Is the photo good enough for you to see? It's real floss wrapped around cardboard columns. No more after-the-fact spec'ing headaches. Of which there have been many. So many. Because I always forget to label my floss skeins.

Even the metallic and variegated flosses that I never use are there. Haha. But I might use them. And if I do I can spec 'em.

And a handy visual guide for widths of Pearl Cottons. So nice.

My sincere thanks to Renae of Benzie Design for giving me the link to purchase this wondrous thing. I had been searching for one and all I could find was a wildly inaccurate printed version on Amazon. It's nice to know smart people.