Jingle Pillow Knock-off

I was flipping through the Pottery Barn Catalog, getting into the holiday spirit when I saw this:

Inspired by Pottery Barn, once again: you had me at jingle, Pottery Barn!  I did consider buying it, for about 35 seconds, but, knowing that I could make it myself, I had a go.  Here's what I did:

Using a font called Medici Text, I wrote out the word, "jingle."  Then I took three flourishes - Echo Park Flourish, Holly Corner & Vintage Style Flourish Motif.  With the Echo Park Flourish, I just rotated it so that it was on its side as above, brought it up to the "e," and welded.

I took the Holly Corner and made a cut, deleting away the part I didn't want.  Then rotated the piece and brought it to the bottom of the "J."

Then I cut a piece of the Vintage Flourish off and brought it to the "J."   I made it smaller, selected the two flourishes and the "J" and welded.

That done, I moved onto the pillow itself.  I looked everywhere for a pillow form that was the right size, but didn't find anything until I was in Target and stumbled upon a Christmas pillow that was perfect.  So I decided to cover it!  The pillow measured 11" x 18".  So, using one of my all-time favorite pillow tutorials, I made a cover out of burlap.  Using the guidelines of the tutorial, my front piece was cut out at 19" x 12", and my back pieces were 12" x 12" each.  Before sewing them together, I wanted to add the "jingle" words to the largest piece.

Now for the easy part!  Or so I thought...dun dun dun...  My initial idea was that I would use stencil vinyl to stencil this on the pillow.  Which I did try.  But the stencil had to be small enough to fit onto the pillow, so it bled into the fabric, and getting it on straight was a nightmare and the kids needed to have dinner and I lost the center of the "e" and it looked terrible.  Sigh.

So plan B: I used heat-transfer vinyl (which I handily had on hand from my napkin project!).  I sized it in Silhouette studio, then cut it out of flocked vinyl, weeded it and ironed it on!  Then I put all of the pillow pieces right sides together and sewed.  Finally, I added bells with embroidery thread.  And...yay!  Another Christmas craft project off the table!

In retrospect, I would like to have made the design bigger.  But then, I would also liked to have made the stenciling work!  Actually, making the design bigger might make stenciling easier...Hmmm...Upwards, and onwards, crafters!

Jingle Bells and Merry Christmas!