Loop de Loop Pillows - the purl bee

Tuesday

Dec132011

Molly's Sketchbook: Loop de Loop Pillows

I am a chronic doodler. My school notebooks always had more scribbles of flowers, geometric shapes, and animals than actual notes. To this day, my Purl Bee notes look more like mysterious outsider art than useful information. One of my recurring doodle themes is a loop de loop motif. I love the hypnotic repetition of it.

With this penchant for doodling, it’s no wonder that I love embroidery so much. It’s basically drawing with thread. Once you master a couple of basic stitches your needle and thread become as versatile as a pencil, but unlike a tossed off pencil sketch, embroidery has an elegant and refined finish.

These Loop de Loop Pillows combine the simple, breezy feeling of a notebook jot with the beauty of embroidery. I used soft, rustic Prairie Cloth in a gorgeous natural color as the base and accented it with sumptuous black silk embroidery thread. These pillows are very simple to make but end up looking so modern and sophisticated.

Materials

For a set of three pillows, two 14-inch square and one 18-inch square:

2 yards of Prairie Cloth in Porcelain
3 spools of Trebizond Silk Embroidery Thread in Black, color 111
Ecru colored cotton thread (I used color 1040)
A water soluble fabric marker
An embroidery hoop

Note: If you'd just like to make one pillow you will need 1/2 a yard of fabric for each 14-inch pillow and 1 yard for each 18-inch pillow. You will also need just one spool of silk embroidery thread per pillow

Cutting

For the smaller pillows cut :

2- 15-inch squares
4- 11-inch X 15-inch rectangles

For the larger pillow cut:

1- 19-inch square
2- 13-inch X 19-inch rectangles

Put all of the rectangular pieces aside until you reach the sewing section of the pattern.

Marking

For pillow A:

Mark a horizontal line 6-inches from the bottom edge, across the entire width of the square.
Mark a line 1 1/2-inches above the first line and parallel to it. Starting 1-inch from the left edge make a mark every inch along this line.
Mark a line 1 1/2-inches below the first line and parallel to it. Starting 1/2-inch from the left edge make a mark every inch along this line.

Using your marker connect the marks as shown above, making an loop at each mark with the whole motif bisected by the center marking. You may want to practice this with a pencil and paper first.

This is what the square will look like after it's marked all the way across.

For pillow B:

Mark a horizontal line 3-inches from the bottom edge of the square.
Mark a line 2-inches above the first line and parallel to it. Starting at the left edge make a mark every 1 1/2-inches along this line.

Connect these marks with simple loops as shown above, starting from the bottom line, and making the top of the loop at each top marking.

This is what the square will looked like when it's all marked.

For pillow C (This is the most free form of any of the pillows so you can just use these markings as a rough guide) :

Mark the giant single loop de loop starting 4 1/2-inches from the bottom edge at the left side, swooping up and to the right and ending at the top edge, 6-inches from the right side.
Continue the loop at the top edge 9 1/2-inches from the left side, swooping down to the right and ending at the bottom edge, 4-inches from the right side.
Continue the loop at the bottom edge 8-inches from the left side, swooping it more abruptly to the right ending on the right side 9 1/2-inches from the bottom edge.

Embroidery

All of the embroidery on these pillows is done with a simple split stitch. A split stitch is a back stitch in which the needle enters the fabric into the middle of the previous back stitch. If you have never done it before you can follow along with the diagram above. The odd numbers represent needle exit point, and the even numbers represent needle entry points.

Using the silk embroidery thread split stitch along the markings of pillow A. Use the embroidery hoop to keep the fabric taught as you go.

Embroider across the entire marked area of pillow A.

Do the same for pillow B.

And the same for pillow C.

Sewing

Regardless of size pillows A, B, and C are sewn together in the same manner. For pillows A and B you will be using two of the smaller rectangles, for pillow C you will be using the two larger rectangles.

Hem the rectangle pieces by pressing one of their long sides over 1-inch twice and then edge sewing this fold down. The side with the fold is now the wrong side of the rectangle.

Place the pillow top right side up. Lay one of the rectangles wrong side up along the square's left side lining up the raw edges.

Lay the second rectangle, wrong side up along the right hand side of the square, lining up the edges.

Pin the pieces in place around the perimeter of the square.

To make sure the pillows corners are neat you will want to sew a curve instead of a right angle. Mark this curve by using a juice glass as instructed below.