It makes sense this is the first DIY gift I’m going to show you because I definitely spent the most time on them. I decided to make Dawn a set of her very own days of the week pillowcases–like the underwear most of us wore as kids and I sort of want a set of as an adult.
Finally complete and ready to be given--and they're only five months late!
Maybe the fact that days of the week pillowcases seemed like a good gift deserves some explanation, but that is not what this post is about. To sum things up, Dawn changes her pillowcase every night. Anyway, I started on these at the end of July (Dawn’s birthday is mid-August), thinking I’d have plenty of time to finish them before her birthday. Using another pillowcase as a point of reference, it only took me a couple of days to sewed the pillowcases in a lightweight natural muslin. I finished them over the summer during the last few days of our extended stay with my parents (as we waited to close on the house). Once we got moved in, I pushed them aside for a week or so as we got unpacked and adjusted to life in a new city among strangers. Around the time school started I bought some iron-on inkjet paper and used my (very) limited photoshop skills to make the seven templates for the embroidery I would do on the edge of each pillowcase.
Even after all that embroidery, I'm still not sick of odstemplik. What a beautiful font!
The font I used is odstemplik, which can be downloaded free at both fontspace and dafont.com, among other places. If you decide to make these yourself, keep in mind you’ll need to print the mirror image of what you want to show up on your pillowcase. After embroidery, you can peel the rest of the iron-on off pretty easily by picking at it with your needle. The simpler your design is the better. I’m sure there are better ways to do this, but I’m not familiar with them. All you seasoned embroiderers feel free to enlighten me in the comments! (A special note about this method: Make sure you follow the instructions for the iron-on paper very closely. Exposure to too much heat can cause the iron-on to look dark and gross and become much harder to peel off, which, I can say from experience, is a real bummer.) Anyway, once the days of the week were transfered to the pillowcases, I took them all to school and left them in my desk with the naive assurance that I could finish them during my office hours. However, it seemed that all semester long there were papers to be graded, coffee to be gotten, and other sundry distractions that go along with sharing an office with so many of my friends. Consequently, my progress has been excruciatingly slow, and Dawn is only now getting to enjoy her intended birthday gift.
I used satin and chain stitch for the entirety of the project, mostly because those are the only two stitches I know.
I’m really happy to be done with these! Not only because I’ve been feeling like a real turd for giving Dawn’s gift so late, but also because I’m ready to start on something new. I enjoyed working on these because, once I got the hang of it, embroidery became a really relaxing hobby. I can’t wait to start on something new–maybe something that features some stitches other than satin and chain.
Happy Wednesday!
