Post by shinyjiggly on Aug 12, 2010 18:03:18 GMT -6
If you've been on skype for the past couple of days, you'd know that I've been working on an epic baby face pillow. At 3 something AM last night, I finally completed it! Here's a pic of it:
Anyways, This is a tutorial on how to make a pillow similar or exactly like mine. Let's begin!
First of all, you must pick a sprite to work with. Try to keep it small. I chose the ever iconic baby face from Mario Paint (duh) You should enlarge your sprite a lot so that you can get the details down.
Next up, you should pick a scale to go by. I chose to enlarge each pixel to a square inch to make it easier. Since I used a 16x16 sprite, it turned out to be a 16"x16" pillow, about the right size for a pillow. You may want to use centimeters for bigger sprites.
now that you got that down, you have to examine your sprite closely and see how many of each pixel you need. For some pieces (like baby face's mouth), you should make a special piece. you might need some graph paper to figure it out.
now for the easiest part: Shopping! Now that you know how many of each piece, you can buy your materials. I used a flannel fabric for most of the pillow and it works pretty well, is lightweight, and isn't TOO messy (though the black did fray a little). Also, it was on sale for less than felt! For the other pieces, I just dug up some random scraps that I already had in my fabric bag. Also, make sure you get a LOT of stuffing. Seriously. I used an ENITRE 12oz. bag of stuffing on baby face and it still has room for more!
Anyways, cut out your pieces of fabric and lay them out onto the piece of fabric that's the max size of your pillow. Here's what baby face looked like at this stage:
Now that everything's in place, you can start sewing! make sure to take the pins out as you go. This job should be pretty easy but tedious with a sewing machine.
After that, you can cut the edges away from your sprite.
Next up, the backside. not very many people will be looking at the back side so usually you can just pin and sew the outline on the back. If you're feeling really crazy, you could make the back the same as the front (flipped so that it will fit). I decided not to do this for the baby face.
Now that you have all that squared away (lol, she said square), you can measure the perimeter of the sprite with a measuring tape.
Remember this number! Because now you have to make a strip that's just as long (plus 5 inches or something) and 5 in wide. This strip should be the same color as the outline.
Now, pin this strip along the side of your sprite. Now is for one of the most monotonous parts. You must now pin and sew each and every corner to improve the blockyness. For inside corners, flip in inside-out first. It should wind up looking something like this:
make sure to keep the seam where the two ends of the strip meet unsewn at this point! this will become the stuffing hole.
Once that horrible task is done, you can flip it inside-out , transfer the pins to the other side, and start sewing the strip onto the sprite. It might be a little awkward because the lines that you sewed earlier will be going against you. But it's important that they're there so that everything lines up. This task may have to be done manually if the straight lines aren't long enough.
After that, you can sew the backside on in the same way. You probably won't need as many pins for this one.
Once both sides are firmly sewn on to the strip, turn the pillow right side-in and start stuffing! I used a relatively cheap polyester fiberfill stuffing on the baby face.
After you totally fill the pillow with stuffing, you can sew up that last opening in your pillow. This would be the time to put a tag on it if you want.
And TADAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaa!~ Your very own pillow! Now you can epically pwn in pillow fights, show off to your friends, sleep with it, sell it to somebody, or whatever you want!
Anyways, This is a tutorial on how to make a pillow similar or exactly like mine. Let's begin!
First of all, you must pick a sprite to work with. Try to keep it small. I chose the ever iconic baby face from Mario Paint (duh) You should enlarge your sprite a lot so that you can get the details down.
Next up, you should pick a scale to go by. I chose to enlarge each pixel to a square inch to make it easier. Since I used a 16x16 sprite, it turned out to be a 16"x16" pillow, about the right size for a pillow. You may want to use centimeters for bigger sprites.
now that you got that down, you have to examine your sprite closely and see how many of each pixel you need. For some pieces (like baby face's mouth), you should make a special piece. you might need some graph paper to figure it out.
now for the easiest part: Shopping! Now that you know how many of each piece, you can buy your materials. I used a flannel fabric for most of the pillow and it works pretty well, is lightweight, and isn't TOO messy (though the black did fray a little). Also, it was on sale for less than felt! For the other pieces, I just dug up some random scraps that I already had in my fabric bag. Also, make sure you get a LOT of stuffing. Seriously. I used an ENITRE 12oz. bag of stuffing on baby face and it still has room for more!
Anyways, cut out your pieces of fabric and lay them out onto the piece of fabric that's the max size of your pillow. Here's what baby face looked like at this stage:
Now that everything's in place, you can start sewing! make sure to take the pins out as you go. This job should be pretty easy but tedious with a sewing machine.
After that, you can cut the edges away from your sprite.
Next up, the backside. not very many people will be looking at the back side so usually you can just pin and sew the outline on the back. If you're feeling really crazy, you could make the back the same as the front (flipped so that it will fit). I decided not to do this for the baby face.
Now that you have all that squared away (lol, she said square), you can measure the perimeter of the sprite with a measuring tape.
Remember this number! Because now you have to make a strip that's just as long (plus 5 inches or something) and 5 in wide. This strip should be the same color as the outline.
Now, pin this strip along the side of your sprite. Now is for one of the most monotonous parts. You must now pin and sew each and every corner to improve the blockyness. For inside corners, flip in inside-out first. It should wind up looking something like this:
make sure to keep the seam where the two ends of the strip meet unsewn at this point! this will become the stuffing hole.
Once that horrible task is done, you can flip it inside-out , transfer the pins to the other side, and start sewing the strip onto the sprite. It might be a little awkward because the lines that you sewed earlier will be going against you. But it's important that they're there so that everything lines up. This task may have to be done manually if the straight lines aren't long enough.
After that, you can sew the backside on in the same way. You probably won't need as many pins for this one.
Once both sides are firmly sewn on to the strip, turn the pillow right side-in and start stuffing! I used a relatively cheap polyester fiberfill stuffing on the baby face.
After you totally fill the pillow with stuffing, you can sew up that last opening in your pillow. This would be the time to put a tag on it if you want.
And TADAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaa!~ Your very own pillow! Now you can epically pwn in pillow fights, show off to your friends, sleep with it, sell it to somebody, or whatever you want!