elephant pillow for a friend

i actually sewed something this weekend, go me! ok don't get too excited, it's just a pillow. but at least it's something!

a friend of mine is having a birthday on friday and she loves elephants, so i knew i wanted to make her something elephanty. i searched for elephant prints and decided on this one: Valori Wells Karavan Marrakech Peacock. the elephants are pretty large in this print so i decided a cute pillow was the way to go. after conferring with some sewing friends, i decided to do a coordinating fabric for the back, and i picked this Valori Wells Karavan Savannah Peacock

i ordered a half yard of each fabric and actually you could get a whole pillow out of one half yard, so i had enough to do a second pillow, but decided to save the fabric and maybe i'll make her a boxy makeup bag or something with it for christmas.

the last pillow i made i discovered you really have to interface your fabric or the polyfill will try to start poking through your fabric, which leaves little fuzzies everywhere, and that's no good. this time i was going to buy some cheap white fabric and interline it rather than using fusible lightweight interfacing, which i thought made the fabric feel stiffer than i wanted. but then i was at joann's getting an invisible zipper to use (i picked a matching light blue), and saw they had a set of 2 pre-made pillow forms 50% off. so i decided to just save my time and use the pre-made ones. (plus this gave me another pillow form to use for another friend's birthday coming up in october.) the pillow forms are 16" square, which is exactly what i wanted.

And here's the final result, sitting on my bright red sofa, which will not be its final home. my friend has a mostly purple color scheme, so i think this pillow will fit much better in her house because there are purples in the elephant print, plus did i mention, she LOVES elephants.

front

side

back
i really hope she likes it.

almost forgot....

gratuitous dog photo!