Two Jacobean Pillows
If you ever wanted to embroider with wool thread (also known as Lana or Monet) but had a hard time finding designs to use for it, you’re in luck. The Jacobean collection by Anita Goodesign has 18 designs digitized for the wool thread as well as the same designs digitized for standard thread. These designs can be arranged to create beautiful samples for pillows, quilt squares and wall hangings. In this project, we create two pillows.
1:
The first pillow is a patchwork that uses the Lana Thread. This pillow was relatively easy to create: we just used fabric scraps to create it. This is a good way to sew out individual designs and end up with a larger project.
2:
Plan the size of each fabric piece for your pillow, including the fabric that the embroidered designs will grace.
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Choose the embroidery designs for your pillow. We used "Large Combined Flower Motif" (Hdja11) for the largest piece and "Swirling Stems and Leaves with 5 Flowers" (Hdja6) for the top piece. "Small Flower without leaves 2" (Hdja13), "Small Flower 2" (Hdja16), and "Small Flower without Leaves 1" (Hdja18) are used along the right hand side of the pillow.
4:
Embroider the designs on the designated fabric pieces. When you embroider with wool, use a 100/16 size needle, use a thread stand, and slow your machine down for best results.
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Select the patchwork piecing fabrics. In our example, three fabrics were selected to coordinate with the designs and with each other. Here you can see we chose a large scale print, a medium scale print, and a striped fabric.
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A heavy brush fringe adds the perfect accent.
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Our second pillow uses an interesting "tile" design. To create it, use embroidery editing software to arrange the individual motifs by flipping and mirroring them around a central design. This layout requires multiple hoopings when done without editing software, or when using a hoop smaller than the finished tile design. We used "Corner Flower with Swirling Triangle Border" (Hdjar1) for the four corners. "Small Flower without Leaves 3" (Hdjar18) was placed at the edges of the horizontal center. "Small Flower" (Hdjar9) was mirrored and placed at the edges of the vertical center. "Small Flower Motif 3" (Hdjar15) is in the center, ringed by "Two Flower Motif 2" (Hdjar12) rotated 90 degrees and mirrored.
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Embroider the tile design on a white fabric for the center of the pillow.
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Select accent fabrics for the patchwork border. We used one solid pink fabric, two patterns of gingham checks of different sizes in black and pink, and a black and white polka-dot fabric.
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The patchwork border is a basic “Log Cabin” technique.
11:
The pillow was finished off with purchased cording.