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[lindapendant.livejournal.com]

I made a Lily flower pillow this week.




I'm placing a


Make a template out of cardboard for your flower petals, I used two sizes.



Fold your fabric and cut out your petals. Place them stacked one on top of the other, large petals on the bottom, smaller ones on top.




I made several variations of the flowers, some using the same templates but cut out shorter, like so.



Some flowers have less petals than others, there is no wrong way to do this.

Stitch through the center of the flower, starting from the back.



Fold your flower in half and tack the two sides together, about 1/8 of an inch from the edge.



Fold the flower the opposite way and tack those two sides together.



Make a bunch, they should look like this.



Cut out a front and back of your pillow cover in whatever size and shape you want. Mine is 16 by 16 inches, finished. Because I was using a thin fabric, I doubled the front cover so that the flowers were well anchored and wouldn't rip the fabric if they were tugged.

Pin your flowers onto the right side of the pillow cover starting in the center and working around until you're happy with how it looks.



Tack the flower centers firmly into place from the wrong side of your pillow cover.



When all the flowers have been sewn into place, drape your cover upright onto a pillow or the arm of a couch, in the way it's going to be placed when finished. You will see that all the tops of the flower petals droop downward and look sad and pitiful.

Keeping the cover in this upright position, pin the droopy petals up so that all the flowers look happy, like so.



From the front side, tack all the pinned petals into place using very tiny stitches. I used a running thread to do this so that I wouldn't be cutting and knotting thread eleventy hundred times.



Pin and sew your front cover to the back cover with right sides together a half inch from raw edges, making sure not to catch any petals in the seams. Leave an opening about 6 inches long on one side.



Clip corners.



Turn right side out, and stuff.



Hand or machine stitch the opening closed. Go admire your pillow.



I like living on the edge, but if you don't, you may want to install a zipper on your cover and use a pillow insert for easier washing. To minimize the petal edges from fraying too much, you might want to wash it inside a pillow case and hang to dry.