Did you see this owl pillow I made that’s featured on the Accuquilt blog

Did you see this owl pillow I made and wrote about on Accuquilt’s blog?

This is an owl I cut out with the owl STUDIO die!

and I also downloaded the free embroidery file.

I first cut out an owl with the die in paper then got out my box of selvages.

I sorted the selvages to have them face the same way and made sure there were enough to cover the owl shape.

I laid selvages on top of each other and right on the edge, I top stitched it down making sure it doesn’t show the fabric underneath, just the text. I also made sure the text didn’t overlap.

Once it was large enough to cover the entire owl, I got my fusible.

I cut pieces of Steam-A-Seam2 large enough to cover the shapes of the die so I could fuse it to the back of the selvage “fabric” and the other fabric pieces I would use for accenting my owl. 

 

I was able to cut all the shapes in one pass!

For machine embroidery, you also have to prep the background fabric and add some stabilizer onto the back. Here I cut out a 10½” square and added stabilizer.

I got the file onto my embroidery machine and used the 8-inch x 12-inch hoop.

I added stabilizer in the hoop and marked the center and also the center of the fabric.

Then I embroidered the outline of the owl as step 1 of the embroidery file.

I peeled back the fusible on the back of the owl and pressed it on the background fabric with a hot small craft iron within the stitch lines.

I put it back in the machine and stitched out the next two steps, one is the black stitching (the free files actually include 3 different stitch options, I chose the motif stitch). Next was an outline stitch for the eyes, beak and wings.

Here are the owl pieces all stitched down.

I used a Copic marker to add the irises in the eyes.

I ended up turning this into a pillow as I had a 10-inch pillow shape. The back is made with two folded fabrics overlapping so there’s an opening near the middle where I could stuff the pillow in.

I think the owl turned out great! Of course this selvage method can be used with any appliqué shapes and matching embroidery files.

Have you ever tried something like this?