put a bird on it

I had just finished this appliqued pillow and mailed it off to my niece for her birthday when a friend of mine posted a link to one of the skits from Portlandia on Facebook. Essentially, it spoofs our affinity for putting birds on things to make them beautiful. I have to admit I have been sucked into the bird thing in my crafting; how could I avoid the vortex when there's all this bird vibe everywhere? (I also just picked up some great fabric designed by the talented Valori Wells with--you guessed it--birds on it.)

I really enjoyed making this pillow because I started with a big piece of white Kona cotton and played with shapes to come up with a rough design. I used Wonder Under to fuse the basic shapes onto the background and then machine stitched around them. I added hand stitching with embroidery floss (grass, sun) and thread (sky lines), which I really enjoyed doing. I felt like the hand stitching added dimension and character to the pillow.

The back of the pillow is a simple envelope closure with two coordinating fabrics. I fused interfacing to the insides of the backing pieces before construction to add more structure to them.

By the way, I am using up my Wonder Under on projects like this (that won't be worn) as I tried Steam-A-Seam Lite and like it much better.