Completed: Kantha running stitch pillow

Some days I simply crave a finish. Luckily I have plenty of unfinished projects lying around to satisfy that itch. One was half a pillow that I started for one of the projects in the Alison Glass stitch club 2020 that focused on hand stitching. This was a project from the June issue to get familiar with the Kantha running stitch. The idea was to create a piece of patchwork from strips and just fill those in with the running stitch and then sew it to a back to create a pillow.

I gave it my own twist by using a single background colour and a couple of floating colourful rectangles. The colour of the Wonderfil perle 8 cotton threads I used for the Kantha stitching were matched to the colour of the strip I was sewing and I think this looks really nice in the strips that have a splash of colour in them.

The front of the pillow was completed in just a couple of days. I enjoyed doing the running stitch and once I got the hang of loading multiple stitches on the needle sewing was pretty quick. Then I got kind of stuck on the back. I had found a fabric in my stash that I thought would look nice but I wasn’t sure what kind of closure I wanted to do. Envelope? But I felt the print on the back might not look so good cut up. An invisible zipper? But I didn’t have a matching colour… And so the piece sat unfinished for more than 6 months even though I picked it up a couple of times but I kept asking myself the same questions.

In the end I decided that an invisible zipper would look best and that this pandemic is taking too long to wait for matching zipper colours. I’d have preferred to use a black one but I did have grey on hand and since the zipper is invisible you only really see the zipper pull anyway.

The front was already constructed as two layers and I only trimmed it square and did an overlock stitch around the edges to prevent fraying. For the back I also cut a lining piece because I feel that pillows do look better when they’re lined instead of a single layer of fabric.

Whenever I make a project like this I think I should do hand sewing more often since I enjoy it so much when I am doing it, but then usually I end up not not doing any hand stitching for months. This quarter my guild’s theme is slow stitching though and that is a very good reason to pick up some hand sewing needles soon.  

I also should buy more pillow forms because each time I make a new cover I have to remove one from another pillow. Or I should stop making more, but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon right?

February 13, 2021

Emmely Treffers

About Emmely

I am a sewing enthusiast from the Netherlands. I live in the Leiden area with my husband and two daughters and I am currently working as a senior researcher in molecular virology. With my quilting patterns and sewing blog I want to infect as many people as possible with my love for sewing.

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8 Comments

  1. katechiconi

    One can never have too many pillows… love the stitching, which gives a sort of intensity of detail that contrasts with the simple graphic shapes in a very satisfying way.

    Reply
    • Emmely

      Yes, more pillows is definitely the way to go. 😉

      Reply
  2. marissthequilter

    Lovely work and I am sure that you are getting much pleasure in looking at the fiinished pillow.
    I know that feeling of needing to finish something!

    Reply
    • Emmely

      To tell the truth, I am not so sure my family really appreciates this new pillow. I had taken off another pillow cover so I could stuff this new one. I couldn’t find the new pillow this morning and someone had stuffed the whole thing into the old pillow cover… What to make of that? I am very happy with it though so I’ll just continue to put it on display. 🙂

      Reply
  3. Joy

    I’m all for the grey zipper! Not to worry at all. 🙂

    Reply
    • Emmely

      Thank you! I probably tend to overthink these details a bit. Now that it’s in I wonder why I didn’t just use this zipper sooner.

      Reply
    • Emmely

      Thank you!

      Reply

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