Machine embroidered pillow cover

Happy Saturday! I’m sooooo thankful for the weekend! It was a busy/stressful week, and I’m glad to relax with my family for a few days! It doesn’t hurt that the weather is nice & sunny, either.

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This week, I’m sharing a project that was so fun to make. I got to try out more of the stitches on my sewing machine, play around with colored threads, and make a new pillow cover- three of my favorite things in one project! 

Here’s what you’ll need:

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1/2 yard of 7 oz. cotton duck natural, several colors of thread, a disappearing ink pen/marker, and a ruler + sewing machine.

 

I just love trying out new stitches on my machine. I was looking through some old magazines recently, and saw a few pillows with gorgeous hand embroidery, and I just loved them! I wanted a fresh new pillow cover for spring, but not only am I not great at hand embroidery, but I don’t have a ton of time for it either, with a toddler running around. I figured machine embroidery was better than no embroidery, so I gave it a try!

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To start, cut out a 16″ square, and 2 pieces of 16″ x 12.5″. For now, you can set aside the 2 rectangles & just focus on the square.

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I laid my pillow top on the cutting mat & used my ruler to figure out that I could fit 7 lines on the fabric if I drew them 2″ from each end, and 2″ apart from each other.

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With 7 lines, I decided to go for 7 different colors of thread. I went with a rainbow palette, but you are more than welcome to do whatever you like. I think different shades of the same color would be gorgeous!

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Once you decide what colors to use, and what order to sew in, you get to decide which stitches to use! I had a piece of scrap fabric nearby that I used to ‘test’ out stitches. That was kindof fun!

Anyway, there’s no right or wrong way to choose your stitches, just use what speaks to you!

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A really good idea is to be sure that you have plenty of thread in your bobbin so you don’t run out in the middle of a stitch! Thankfully, I was able to pick up right where I left off, and you can’t tell that anything happened. 🙂

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Once you’ve finished your stitches, it’s time to turn your square into a pillow cover!

I used the same steps as in the fussy cut pillow cover tutorial to finish this pillow!

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I thought it’d be nice to use one of the fun stitches to hem the back rectangles. I just love how it turned out!

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