Horns of a Dilemma

I was truly on the horns of a dilemma this morning-caught between two things that I love to do! I love to garden (in the correct weather) and I love to craft. Our weather is absolutely beautiful and the perfect day to spend in the garden BUT, I had started the turkey pillow yesterday and I really wanted to see it through! In the end, the pillow won but I do have all of my windows open again and we have a beautiful breeze blowing so I am kind of getting the best of both worlds!

Since I was OK with how yesterday ended with the turkey, today was mostly about assembly. I did decide to draw a black outline around the pieces to remind me where to sew but also to cover my stitches just in case they weren't perfect-more about that in a minute.

I did forget that I needed to make the "year" patch for the corner of the pillow so out came my stamps and ink. After stamping and cutting it out, it too got a marker outline. 

Next I wanted to add the two stripes and I went ahead with my original idea of using a Sharpie marker. If that didn't work I could have pulled out a brush and painted over it but because these lines were thin, a brush on this nubby fabric would be hard to control. A lot of the decisions I made were mainly because of the drop cloth texture. If this was a different fabric, I might have done things differently but I like the rustic feel of this and I am good with its quirks! Lol

I was happy to have the lines there for guidance. When sewing a straight line, this was "easy peasy" but once the turns came into play-and because of the ease of raveling-much of the sewing was slow and a bit stop-&-go so not perfectly in line. And that is where the marker lines helped because when I was totally done with the sewing, if there was any deviance between my stitches and the marker line, I could just easily give it a little fill-in with a bit more marker. I guess I could have sewn everything first and then just gone over it with the marker but, quite honestly, that thought just came to me. Lol

I had originally planned to do a French knot for his eye and embroider on the feet with black embroidery thread but since I drew the stripes, I decided to just draw in these details as well...and I am good with them. Now it is a simple matter of just cutting the two back pieces and sewing the envelope style pillow cover together and stuffing it with one of my many, many pillow inserts.

And, voila! He is done. The only pillow insert I have not already in use right now was one from PB and it may be a tad too large as he is bursting at the seams so as soon as I empty some Halloween pillows I think I can find one a little more fitting.

In any case, I think I like him even though he gave me a bit of a run for my money!

I think I'm off on a few errands tomorrow and not sure what the weekend holds but I definitely need to get back to finish our tour before I head off next week. I HONESTLY DON'T know where my favorite season is going! Stay safe and stay tuned.

But wait, there's more! Lol As I was looking at the last picture I decided that I really didn't like the date tag being the same color as the background of the pillow so I gave it a very light dusting of "vintage photo" distressing ink and I'm hoping it doesn't rub off. Fingers crossed but I like that it stands out a bit more now and kind of balances the large blob of color that is the turkey. LOL.