XOXO Valentine's Day Pillows

I have absolutely not one decoration for Valentine's Day so this year, during Riley's nap of course, I decided to make some easy Valentines Day pillows. OK I confess, I didn't get them done during her nap only, I worked on them after dinner as well. I got the idea from Craftaholicsanonymous.com. It looked simple enough so I set out to Joann's today for some fleece. I actually had some pink fleece in my stockpile so all I needed was red, I got 1/2 a yard and I already had some polyfill from my Puff Quilt.

Next thing I needed to do was make a template. So I rummaged through my cardboard pile and found a pizza box, hence the grease stains. I didn't print anything out I just free handed the X and O and then cut it out when I was finally satisfied with how it looked. I decided after I had done this that it would have actually been easier to do on freezer paper because then I could have ironed down the pieces but oh well, too late and all went well enough.



I just doubled over the fabric and made sure my template would fit on the half yard and then cut out a little extra around the edges to give me room for where I was going to sew. For the center of the O I actually didn't cut the fabric right up to the edge because I wanted to have enough for where I was going to sew. I just used a marker to mark where exactly I wanted to cut it.

To make my life a little harder than it needed to be I decided on a cool pattern to sew instead of the standard straight stitch. I also used contrasting thread, white on the red (mainly because I didn't think about using light pink until I started doing the X's) and red on the pink. I just left enough of an opening at the bottom to stuff my pillows with polyfill. Don't worry about the creases going through the fleece, once you put the stuffing in it will pull the fabric tight and you won't notice, I didn't bother ironing this at all.










Then I used pins to pin together the opening before I sewed it. The rest of the project I didn't have to use pins because fleece sticks pretty well together and stays there but when it is stuffed it is hard to keep all together, hence the pins. Then I just trimmed all of the loose threads and I was done!

 

Now I have a Valentines Day decoration that is durable and happens to be greatly enjoyed by my 2 year old daughter so of course we had a little photo shoot! Not to mention, now that I am done I could use the red O's and use them for Christmas, I will just need green H's (HOHO). I wish I could say I thought of that all along but I did not.