Gingerbread Couple Pillows

I love to sew. I have always liked pretty clothes, and my mom told me when I was twelve years old that if I were to have all the clothes I seemed to want, I had to make them. She was very practical. I come by that honestly. Needless to say, I learned to sew. I made clothes all through high school and college and actually was a fashion merchandising/home ec major for a while. I made lots of nice clothes for Gil, I made Amby and Zac cute outfits, and I saved an unbelievable amount of money. I don't make lots of clothes now, but I still love to sew. I actually just bought myself a very cool Janome sewing machine. I encourage any of you who have thought about it to take sewing lessons and learn how because it can come in very handy.

These are some decorative pillowcases I made last year before Amby and Nathan came home for Christmas. Amby's room doubles as a guest room and I like to decorate it for Christmas. We painted it an apricot color, so I couldn't use the typical red and green, so I chose this plaid as the base. (It actually matches the room better than it does in the picture). I found the gingerbread pattern online and printed it. I used a flannel-like fabric for the gingerbread people and ironed on wonder under, cut out the shape, and the ironed it onto the pillow fabric. I embroidered them on with a blanket stitch and attached the rickrack by hand. Then I added buttons, bows, etc. I used a ready-made pillowcase as a pattern and sewed a matching border onto the pillowcase.


If you aren't feeing this industrious, just find some cute Christmas fabric and make pillowcases from that. Talk a friend who sews into doing it for you. It would also be nice to buy really pretty ready-made pillowcases and have them monogrammed with the initials of your guest, and then give them to your guest as a gift.