My customer sent a shirt that was precious to her. We talked about some aspects of what she wanted done with the shirt. But it is often hard to know what I am dealing with until I receive the shirt. I was surprised at how worn the shirt was. It was threadbare!
The shirt belonged to her grandfather and was very special to her. She asked me to make two pillow covers – one for her mom and one for herself. She came up with the idea that I could separate the two sides of the front and sew it to one half of the back, so that I could create two “fronts” from the entire shirt. She even had the idea to add purchased pearl snaps to the left side so that it would still look like the front of the shirt.
She asked that I embroider two special messages. Since I now only had one real pocket, I used a cotton fabric for the backing and for a faux pocket where I put her special messages.
I was afraid to work with the fabric because it was so thin. To strengthen it, I interfaced it with a fusible, woven interfacing – shirt tailor, I believe. I also added a fusible fleece interfacing.
She also wanted a clutch, although she said she might be afraid to use it.
It was a challenge to work with the fabric, but I think we achieved our goals.
If you are interested in having a memory pillow or clutch made, please contact me.
Your pillows turned out awesome! Glad to hear the idea to strengthen ultra thin fabric. I hope she enjoyed them. 🙂
Could you share step by step instructions. What exactly did you use for the back of the pillow.
I recently lost my father and would love to make and give a pillow to each of my siblings and my mom for Christmas. Time is at hand and I will have to get working on this quickly.
I am sorry for your loss. I use the front and back of the shirts to create the front and back of the pillow.
I love how you were able to create so much with just one shirt! Do you remember what size pillows you used? You did such beautiful work. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much! Most of the time I use 18″ pillow forms. Sometimes a woman’s shirt will be smaller and then I use a 16″.