Monogrammed Pillow

Since I made the poinsettia pillow for Christmas, I have been wanting to make another pillow out of the tea stained muslin I purchased for that project. I really like the texture of this fabric and it I found it very easy to work with. I have had my eye on a monogrammed pillow for a while and decided now was the perfect time to try it.

The hardest part of the project was selecting the font I wanted to use for the monogram. I went through all the fonts I have loaded on my pc (several times) and finally narrowed the choice to one of these.

I really had a hard time deciding. By the way, a great source for free fonts is one of my absolutely favorite blogs, Kevin and Amanda. Amanda bakes incredible sweet treats and is definitely my photography inspiration. Her travel pictures are awesome. Amanda has many free fonts that are available for downloading and I find myself continually selecting one of her fonts for my projects. In fact, my final choice for the monogram pillow was the ‘Hey Gorgeous’ font. I use that one all the time, including in my grocery, menu and planner templates.

To make the template, I started by printing out the ‘G’ in the Hey Gorgeous font using the biggest size that would fit on a piece of paper.

Unfortunately that still was not big enough for the space I wanted to fill on the pillow. Plan B then was to get out some craft paper and free hand the letter. I am certainly not very artistic but got a semi-close approximation of what I wanted. I used this template to cut out the letter on the white felt I had leftover from the poinsettia pillow.

Since I was making an 18 inch pillow cover, I cut out 1-18 inch square of the muslin and 2-18×11.5 inch pieces of fabric. Notice I did not cut extra for the seams. Cutting the fabric the same size as the insert pillow will ensure the pillow is firm and plump when inserted into the cover.

I then pinned the felt ‘G’ to the muslin, then basted it in place.

There are several ways you can adhere the monogram to the pillow including the use of fusible interfacing, fabric glue or even applique. I have always like the combination of felt and a blanket stitch so that is what I decided to do. It has been several years since I used a blanket stitch so I did a quick look-up for a tutorial on you tube and found several to choose from. Once I had the hang of it I sewed the letter to the pillow front.

To assemble the pillow cover I created a hem on the two smaller pieces of fabric by ironing down 1/4 inch and then another 1/4 inch on one of the 18″ sides and then top stitching. These two become the back of the pillow.

I then laid the pillow front with the right side facing up and laid the two smaller pieces on top with the right side facing down, overlapping the two hems.

I pinned around the edges and then sewed a 1/4 inch seam around the entire pillow cover. I clipped the corners, turned it right side out and inserted my pillow.

I probably spent about an hour and 1/2 in total making this pillow and that included searching for the font. Since I had the felt and muslin left over from my poinsettia pillow and reused a pillow I already had for the inside, I only spent 37 cents on some white embroidery thread to complete this project. Pretty thrifty don’t you think?