Pillow Talk ~ Play Ball!!!

The past few days I've been working in my son's room.  I've had this baseball print for about a year now, and I really had the best of intentions to use it before now, but I suppose it's better late than never.  Two pillowcases and a throw pillow later his room has a bit more boyish pizazz!

The throw pillow was very easy, but I confess that I cheated a bit. First let me just say that I sacrificed my beloved Troy Bolton/High School Musical pillow for the pillow form.  I added some simple appliques that I printed off my computer and ironed on with Heat-n-Bond Lite fusible web. I used a zig-zag instead of a satin stitch (cheat #1) for the edging of the applique.  It's just less of a hassle for me and I like the result just as much!  (TIP: In my note book of patterns I've sketched out, I have jotted down the settings on my machine that I like to use for applique zig-zagging.  This way I don't have to hunt and peck for the right length/width each time!)

I also wanted to incorporate the baseball print a bit more into the pillow besides the applique work, so I decided to pipe it around the edges.  However, I didn't want to actually use piping ~again my laziness ~ so I merely cut 1 inch strips of fabric, folded them in half and lined the raw edges up with the raw edges of the square pillow pieces (cheat #2) for faux-piping.  This left about a 1/4 inch worth of the print emerging from the seams to give the illusion of piping.  Stitching up the open end was a big pain in my caboose was a nice "challenge" with all those raw edges to line up, turn, press, pin and stitch shut, but I got it done and it looks pretty decent. Especially for an almost 7 year old!