Feather Pillow, inspired by The Land of Nod...

Two weeks ago (maybe not even that long ago...) I was flipping through the mail and caught a quick glimpse of the back cover of the latest Land of Nod catalogue...

That's all it took.  At the time I didn't even realize that the pictures were photos of prints that they were selling, of course, duh, that's why they are in the catalogue...I know, I know...Anywho, the point is, that I fell in love with those feathers!  And I knew I wanted needed to make a pillow with those feathers! 

So despite the many other things that needed to get done, I set out to make another pillow for our living room from my scraps!

I cut out my feather shapes from scraps of linen and the centers from scraps of felted wool.  (In case you are interested, here are the templates I made and used for those pieces.)  The little itty bitty strips came from my picnic basket of smaller scraps.  I used the same method I used to make my Ikea bird pillow, backing each piece with Heat and Bond and ironing on before stitching. 

It was easy to make, but all of those little teeny tiny pieces took much longer than I had anticipated to make, to fit, to iron, to stitch...

But, I really love the way it turned out. 

It's also nice, because it's a bit more masculine (I think), which is good because the other pillows I made do seem a bit on the "girly", well, bright, side.

For the back, I decided against an envelope closure because I really wanted to use a solid piece of Anna Maria Horner's Fine Feathered fabric for two reasons...1) because I love it so very much and 2) because this way the pillow can be flipped over if one was so inclined and it looks just as pretty! 
I will say though that, at the time of making this pillow the longest zipper I had was 7".  Um, that was about three inches shorter than I needed it to be.  But I was bound and determined and after some time I managed to squeeze in my pillow form.  I'm a bit impatient (as I think I may have mentioned before) and I didn't want to wait to go out to buy a zipper.  I probably should have waited, but hey, I don't plan to take the cover off anytime soon...so it'll be fine. It's a fun new addition to our pile of handmade pillows.  I love the tiny hints of color in the pillow.  I also love that it's subtle at the same time, that subtly is what attracted me to the original print in the first place after all...

(source for "Birds of a Feather" photo, The Land of Nod)

Have a great day!