DIY | Custom Kid's Pillow

I'm inching towards the finish line on the kids shared bedroom. It looks pretty fantastic already and I just need to tie up the last little touches. One of those was throw pillows for their beds and window seat. I wanted something that would be cute, personal and tie the room together.

Amidst my Pinterest searching I cam across adorable custom pillows made by Sarah  & Abraham. They have a line of Olliegraphic pillows where you can pick the face shape, eyes, hair style and then have your child's name embroidered on the pillow. They would be fabulous gifts!

I really wanted to make most everything in the room and wanted the kids to have something from me so I set out to make an even more custom pillow for each of my kids. I LOVE them.




I started out by sketching how I wanted their faces to look in a sketch book. I played around with it lots and tried to keep it simple (not my strong point).

Here was my instagram from the night of my sketching. The top pic is of the Sarah & Abraham pillows.

Next I traced the pictures using separate paper for the face shape, the hair "piece" and the eyes. I then cut out the "pieces" on paper and pinned them to felt and cut those out. (Sorry no pics of this process). I made sure to make the face shape larger than the hair so it would over lap and not leave empty space.

I then hand stitched the felt pieces onto my chosen fabric (already cut to the size I wanted the pillows). Once I had the face and the hair on I used fabric glue for the eyes (because I didn't want stitching there) and embroidered on the nose, mouth and name. I lightly outlined it in pencil first.

To finish all you need to do is put right sides together, sew it all up except for a 4 inch gap for stuffing and viola, you have a pillow slip cover.

The boy one was pretty pumped to receive his. He knew it was him right away. His hair is not "styled" here but it usually does look like his pillow :)

The girl one also knew immediately who the girl on her pillow was. I went with the pony tail to the side as her bangs grow straight forward and thus always need to be pulled to the side. We now also have to pull them to that particular side because of the whole head shaving incident.

The pillows were super simple to create and my kids love them. They would make fantastic gifts and would be so easy to ship as just the slip cover to any long distance kidlets.

One step closer to a finished bedroom!