Custom Design Heat Transfer Vinyl Pillow

I cannot believe I forgot to share this pillow I made back in September until now. My friend Brittany, the awesome photographer I have talked about before who teaches the best Intro to DSLR class was opening her own office space in Charlotte so I decided to make her a custom pillow for her couch.

For the pillow part I cut two square of beige lightly speckled textured fabric (they sell this with all the white and beige fabrics in varying thicknesses in most fabric stores). I don't remember the exact size I cut but I think it was probably 10x10. You can of course make it whatever size you desire.

I've used freezer paper stenciling on pillows before but never the t-shirt vinyl. First I made the design in the Silhouette software. One design is this camera with the word moments that I got as a freebie in the Silhouette software store awhile back and then I added some extra text to the design. Another design I did was Brittany Lauren Photography's logo. I just picked the font and spacing that was the closest to her logo since the images of her logo I tried to pull online weren't of high enough quality for the software. I got pretty darn close. Then it was really simple to add in the dots.

I cut the designs using black heat transfer vinyl from Expressions Vinyl and then ironed them onto the beige fabric for a double sized pillow. I will say that next time I use the vinyl for a pillow I will make sure the design does not have such thin or skinny pieces to the design like the logo did. It was difficult to weed the vinyl off and then also gave me a hard time when ironing it to stick to the fabric. The camera design side had no issues except for the "this" since it was thin. So that is my advice for working with heat transfer vinyl.

Then I sewed the right sides of the pillow squares together with a 1/4 inch seam allowance leaving a small opening. Next I turned it right side out and stuffed it with fiber fill and hand sewed the opening closed. The hand sewing is my least favorite part... I feel like it never looks as good as I want it to.

I love the way the pillow turned out! It is so fun to make something custom or handmade that you know cannot be bought and really means something to the person you are giving it to.

And Brittany really loved it too! It was a great addition to her fabulously decorated new office.

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Hope this inspires you to try using vinyl on pillows if you haven't yet. A pillow with a person's monogram or wedding date in vinyl would make a great gift too.