It's Here! Foxy Bow Pillow Cover Tutorial

Foxy Bow Pillow Cover

So I recently purchased these from Fabric.com:

Riley Blake Enchant Birds // Michael Miller Waterfront Park Flight // Michael Miller Backyard Baby Birch Forest Aqua

Modern Meadow Dogwood // Timeless Treasures Mini Foxes Gold

As mentioned in the previous post, the fabrics and the method in creating the pillow cover had whether or not it was washable in mind.  I am very particular about having things either be multi purpose of have advantages... such as cleanliness.

Let's begin the tutorial!

What you need for pillow cover:

• Pillow Insert(s) (Tutorial used 14"x14")
• Fabric (tutorial used hand-washable dense acrylic and 100% cotton quilting quality fox fabric)
• Thread
• Needle
• Sewing Machine Optional
• Sew on Snaps or Zipper
• Light Weight Iron on Interfacing Optional

Based on the 14x14 inch pillows:
Step 1: Cut the foundation fabric of the pillow and sides of the bow:

A:This will be the front of the pillow where the bow will be on top of

B: Each pillow will have two B's. They will slightly overlap.  Although, in hindsight I really should have made this more like 15"X10"(B). It depends on what you want to do.  If you want the back to have a large overlap (Where the back of the pillow consists of two B panels that overlap about two inches or so) instead of snaps or zipper... use 15"x10".  If you're going to use a zipper, then this should be fine.  Though, if you're hesitant with sewing, go ahead and make it 15"x9" each for the zipper or snaps for now.

I wanted to really conserve the fox fabric, so I decided to make the back of the bow(C) plain with some scrap white flannel I had around.  If your bow is made of a solid fabric or some other patterned fabric that you have a lot of and don't mind that you won't see half of it, you can combine pieces C and D by just cutting one that is 18"x19".

Keep in mind that after A,B,C,D You'll still need a piece of fabric to "tie" the bow in the middle.  You'll have to think about how wide and long this will need to be, you'll be able to test it out on the final bow in a few later steps.

Step 2: Making the bow with the back of the bow as plain(C) and different from the bow color that you see(D):

 

Note that the wrong side of the fabric is touching the plain fabric.  Sew along the long sides of the two panels for each pillow.  Then flip it right side out.

Step 3: Sew along one of the long sides of each of the B pieces that will overlap.

Step 4: Pin or Clip the sides of the bow fabric (right side out) on the sides of A fabric, centered.  Each pillow gets one A piece.

Step 5: To test out how wide you need the bow panel piece to be, experiment by adjusting the length of the bow and pinching the middle loosely as it would be with the bow tie-piece that will be made later.  You can trim the sides of the bow panel accordingly to "tighten" the bow look.  Make sure both pillows match each other by the length and position of the bow pieces.

This is a visual of an example of how to make sure both pillows have bows positioned in the same place.

Step 6:  Pin the two sides of the bow panels to the two sides of the pillow front (A).  Clip or pin the middle flat.

Step 7:  Sew the edges of the bow panel to the pillow front (A)

Step 8:  With the results of Step 7 complete, lay it flat on the table with the bow facing you.  Position the two resulting B panels on top of it as so with the hemmed sides overlapping each other. If you want more of an overlap (so you don't need to use snaps) just make sure it is overlapped more assuming you have wide enough fabric. (This is also the step where you could have replaced the overlap with a zipper, with the side of the zipper you actually want to see, with the zipper handle, touching the side with the bow.  Once sewn on, unzip it 3/4 so when you sew all the way around the pillow you will have a gap to be able to flip the pillow right side out).

Step 9: Sew along all four sides of the pillow and then flip right side out.  Notice that because the B panels were not wide enough, once the pillow insert is in, there is a gap because the pillow is puffy.

Step 10: Sew a snap or two to close the gap.

Step 11: Now time for the bow tie!  This depends on how wide you want your bow tie to be.  Again, because I wanted to conserve my fox fabric and I wanted to use one of the scraps I had I actually used iron on interfacing as pictured below.  Similar to creating the bow, you could cut fabric 2 times as wide as you want the width to be and then fold it in half length wise with the wrong sides of the fabric facing out... sewing along the long end... and then flipping it right side out... ironing it flat.

Step 12: This is of course optional.  My machine comes with a lot of stitching options so I wanted to give it a little detailing with stitching 32 in its "uppercase" level.  I used this to just add a border along the long sides of the bow ties.

Step 13:  This is based on how thick you want the bow tie to be.  Experiment around until you find just the right sizing for your bow to have the right look you want.  Cut it to be about an inch longer than the width if you had allowed the two ends to barely touch.  Overlap it to the look you want, fold over one of the edges and then use small stitching to sew it up.  Then flip the sewn side to the back of the bow.

There you go! Tutorial for the Washable Foxy Bow Pillow Cover! Have a good weekend everybody! Plenty more projects to come!

What have you been working on lately? What inspires you?