succulent pillow

i'll get back to some selfish sewing shortly, but my new sister-in-law had a birthday the day after mine and i wanted to send her something cute. at their wedding she did succulents as her flowers, she loves them and they looked amazing, so that was my inspiration. i searched for some succulent fabric and Spoonflower came to the rescue.

i didn't design the fabric myself (which is a cool option through spoonflower) because an awesome artist Emily Ann Studio already had the perfect design up. loved it!

i ordered 1 yard of the Basic Combed Cotton (they don't do half yards, but you can do fat quarters). the pricing wasn't super cheap, but i was fine with that because the print was just what i wanted. i paid for the basic (cheapest) shipping option and it felt like it took awhile, but i was probably just anxious to get the fabric so that i could get the gift made and shipped (she lives out of state).

the colors are great and the print quality looks awesome. i'd definitely order from them again, maybe even try my hand at designing my own fabric to have printed. how cool would that be?!

so stitching up the pillow was pretty quick and i serged the seams. i also inserted an invisible zip on one of the side seams in case the pillow gets dirty, she could take out the stuffing and give it a good wash. i just used regular cheap polyfill from hancock's, and unfortunately the little fibers started trying to poke through the fabric. not a huge deal, but a little annoying, and it's a gift so i wanted to make it right. so i went back to the store and bought some pellon fusible interfacing and added that after the fact and then restuffed the pillow. that solved the polyfill poke through problem. i read online somewhere that you should always interface pillows, drrr. now i know.

here's the result!

and good news, the pillow made it safely to my sister-in-law and she texted me a cute photo of her hugging the pillow, yay! sewing success!