Crafty Thrusday: Make Your Own Pillow Buddy

For Christmas I made Sam a lion pillow buddy, after seeing the lion one my sister asked if I would make her a bear pillow buddy. I followed a fellow bloggers tutorial to make the first one,  but I had a really hard time with it because you hand sewed the head and eyes on after everything was done which was really hard and not very secure and the head popped off a few days later, so I figured out a different way to sew the head on. Warning there are lots of photos!

So if you want to make your own pillow buddy this is what you need:

• 1/2 to 1 yard of main fabric
• 1/2 yard of second color (brown on mine) for face and feet
• 1/4 yard (that's the smallest I could get) for nose fabric
• Upholstery thread (helps with hard play!)
• Embroidery thread
• 1 bag of pillow stuffing
• Hook and Loop tape
• Fabric or buttons for eyes
• Optional: Felt for paws on feet.
• Large Paper for making pattern

Start out by cutting out your body piece I made a pattern using a big piece of paper 25" by 19". I like mine big, so it like an actual pillow! Others I have seen are much smaller, so its up to you. Using a round edge to cut out a corner from your pattern and cut the corner out of your body pieces, hang onto them we will use them later. Use the same corner pattern to cut out brown corners for the paws, make the paw a little bigger than the pattern.

Using a plate the size I want for the head I traced a circle on paper, using the paper cut out one circle of the main fabric for the back of the head.

Now draw your face on the circle pattern, and trim down your corner pattern for the ears.

Cut your pattern apart and cut out the parts of the face and six ear pieces from the corners you cut from the body.

For the nose, pin right sides together and sew the first line (where the pin is)

then fold the nose over and pin again, in this picture I have sewn the right side and the left side has a pin in it.

Here is how it looks finished.

To attach the lower part of the face to the top part, find the center of both parts and start pinning, with the picture I added lines to what will be sewn to what, the green will be sewn to the blue right sides together.

After being sewn

For the ears sew right sides together leaving bottom open clip and turn right side out.

To give the ears some body, I folded them in half and made a seam across the bottom.

Baste stitch them where you want them on the face.

Now moving to attaching the head to the body, I found this to be much more secure than hand sewing it on after the pillow is made. Take the back of the head and sew it on to the top body piece where you want the head placed.

Mark where the top center is on the head piece, and fold the top body section and pin in the center of the back of the head. Make sure there is enough room for the seam allowance.

Matching the top centers, pin the front of head to back, right sides together with body piece inside. Sew leaving an opening at the bottom of the head.

Sadly I lost the pictures of how to make it from here from my computer crashing, but its pretty simple. Turn head right side out and unpin body. Sew paws onto body.

Make Velcro strap by sewing two rectangles 4" by 12 1/2" (if you made a different size pillow do half the width of the pillow you made for the length) right sides together leaving one end open. Turn right side out and top stitch to help it lay flat, and sew the hook side of your Velcro to the sewn end. Pin or baste stitch to the top body piece on one side, make sure you have the strap on the right side of the fabric laying toward the center. 

On the top body piece, sew on the loop side of the Velcro, making sure to leave room for the seam allowance (I just added mine after sewing the pillow together...mostly because I forgot to before...)

If you are adding a tail make it the same way you made the ears and baste stitch where you want it, again the open edge facing the seam and the finished tail pointing to the center.

With everything inside the pillow pin your top and bottom body pieces together making sure the seam wont catch anything and sew leaving an opening. Turn right side out. Add extras like eyes, mouth and paws at this point, I added felt paw prints to mine. Stuff both head and body and hand stitch them closed.

I was really happy with how this pillow turned out, I hope my instructions were too confusing!