I normally think of felt as being used mainly with other felt. Making felt food and other kids toys, hand stitched ornaments and decorations, hair accessories or bag embellishments- stuff like that. But lately I’ve been enjoying the mixed textures of felt on quilting cotton. And quilting cotton on felt too.
I made this pillow as a Christmas gift for a 5 year old boy who loves Sonic the Hedgehog. He’s growing up in the wrong decade. I knew I had to get the Sonic just right for such a diehard fan, and the felt made it much easier than you would think.
I began by finding a good picture of Sonic on Google images, then sketching that right onto freezer paper. (Freezer paper has endless crafty uses, if you don’t have a roll, you need one! We usually find ours at Meijer.) Then I cut the different segments of Sonic’s face apart and used those as my pattern pieces to cut out the felt. The shiny side of the paper sticks on when you iron it, making quick work of cutting. We have such a great color selection of felt at Sewn, in the small sized sheets that are perfect for little projects. Do you know how hard it is to find that peachy skin color in nice wool felt? We have it!
After cutting everything out, I appliquéd it onto my pillow front in layers. Since felt is so good at sticking to fabric, I skip the fusible web and just use a couple pins to keep it in place. And since the edges of felt don’t fray, a simple straight stitch close to the edges works great. I even used our invisible thread here so I wouldn’t have to switch with each color of felt.
The background fabric is from the Type collection by Julia Rothman, still in stock. I used just a fat quarter, which is perfect for the front of a 16″ pillow. I love how great the alphabet works behind Sonic!
I finished up by hand stitching the mouth and other details with our black perle cotton, then finished the pillow cover with an envelope closure in back and orange binding around the outside. Quick and easy. The gift was a huge success, and now my own son has put in his order for a Sonic pillow. I guess it doesn’t matter to him that he has no idea who that is…
Happy stitching!
-Jessica
This is adorable…