Personalized pillows – the perfect gift

Pillows provide warmth and comfort, and colorful pillows can brighten up a dull room. For those who love to sew, making pillow cases is one of the simplest projects. Personalized pillows are great gift ideas as everyone loves to hug his own pillow.

The first step is to find nice designs to put on the pillows. There are a lot of sites now that offer personalized pillows and pillow case designs. One site www.youcanmakethis.com has a personalized name pillows design package that comes with pattern, alphabet cut-outs and easy instruction. The patters can be made using a general home sewing machine.   See their video at the bottom of this post.

For those who want to come up with their own personalized designs, here are some basis steps.

Materials:

• Pattern to put on the pillow case
• Pencil, paper
• Colorful pieces of cloths
• Thread
• Needle
• Plain cloth for the pillow case

Steps:

1. Wash the cloth for the pillow case and iron before cutting. Leave 1 inch on every side.
2. On the sheet of paper, trace or draw the pattern you like. The name should fit the size of the pillow case. Add some other patterns like basic shapes, small animal patterns, flowers, etc.
3. Cut the pattern and lay on the small strips of cloths and trace using a pencil. Don’t cut the exact size of the pattern add about 1/8 of an inch to fold.
4. Using needle and thread, sew the design on one side of the cloth for the pillow case. This is a temporary pattern and will let you see how the design will look like.
5. Using a sewing machine, sew the side of the design. Once finished, remove the loose thread.
6. Sew the sides of the pillow case.