Boxes of Fairfield Poly-Fil Fiber Fill, Bernette sewing machines (including a pink one!), and troops of girl scouts all contributed to the heartwarming success of our pillow-making party last Saturday. As part of AllFreeSewing and Favequilts’s efforts to contribute to the Hands-on-Heart Breast Cancer Pillow Drive, dozens of scouts filed into our headquarters with their troop leaders to partake in the event. Together with crafting editors the scouts collaborated to produce over thirty pillows for post-op breast cancer patients! A success in our books.
From beginner sewists to scouts skilled enough to host their own sewing website, everyone who showed up to the event brought a ready willingness to learn and contribute for a greater good.
So, how did we all settle down to learn how to sew pillows? Thanks to BERNINA’s generous support by lending us these gorgeous machines, the job was made much easier. We’ll show you how we went through making pillows effectively, despite the sugar high from all of the donuts we consumed in the morning.
Tracing & Cutting the Pattern
Step one was pretty simple. With Fairfield contributing the free pattern to make these amazing pillows all we had to do was enlarge it by 200% so that it measured out at 12″ X 12″. Participants simply placed the pattern on their folded piece of fabric, traced around it with a fabric marker, and cut.
Sewing the Pillow
With their Pieces freshly cut girl scouts moved to the Bernette sewing machines. Working from the bottom point, they sewed around almost the entire edge of the pillow with a 1/4″ seam allowance, leaving approximately 4 inches opened.
Filling the Pillow
Again, thanks to the wonderful folks at Fairfield we had an abundance of Poly-Fil on hand to stuff these pillows. After turning their newly stitched hearts right-side-in, the girls were ready to stuff.
Whipstitching It Shut
To tie an end to our event for the Hands-on-Heart Breast Cancer Pillow Drive we all used the basic whipstitch. This completed our medley of steps to creating these pillows for breast cancer patients.
To see more photos from our event, check out our album on Facebook right here!
Want to help? Please do! Find all the information on how to donate a pillow to our Hands-on-Heart Breast Cancer Pillow Drive right here! Pillows just need to be post-marked by October 31st! There are prizes involved too so please join the fun!
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