Vintage Kitty Pillow

The day after my Toonces passed away, I was on Etsy looking at every item that had a black cat: fabric, clothing, jewelry, accessories, quilts, pillows, artwork, greeting cards….you get the idea – pretty pathetic!  By the way, there are 37,221 items that come up when you search “Black Cat.”  Anyway, I came across these fabric squares with original artwork of different breeds of cats.  And one of them looked exactly like Toonces!

Isn’t it cute!  I love what is says around the image:
Soft velvet black coat
Always by my side
purring motor firing love
feeling all warm inside

I had to have it!  I contacted the seller to ask a few questions and you will never guess what….she lives 2 miles from my house!  So I arranged to pick the items up so we could meet!

Her name is Maria Nicodemus.  She paints these beautiful pictures of kitties and has them printed on high quality canvas-like fabric.  You can find her Etsy shop HERE or her blog, Ginger Eyed, HERE.

Here are some of her creations:

My daughter has a Bengal Kitty, so I bought this for her – I cant wait to make something WILD out of it!

Here is Marbles already messing it up!

This is how I made my vintage black cat pillow:
I have a large collection of vintage sheets – I pick them up everywhere I go.  When we were preparing to burry our dear Toonces, I cut this sheet in half and used one half to wrap him in.  (pass the Kleenex).  I kept the other half.  I thought it very fitting that I use this fabric to make this pillow.

My pillow form is 18″ so I cut my fabric 19″.  I loved how the hem of the sheet was in different fabric then the main part of the sheet and I wanted to use the lace trim also.  I included the hem in the pillow body.

I ran out of my favorite Therm O Web fusible fleece, so I used their sew in fleece and Heat n Bond basting spray.  (This stuff is amazing!)  The sheet was pretty thin, so this gave it some soft stability.

I couldn’t quite decide what to do around the cat image.  I had some eyelet lace and sewed it to the cat square.

Then I pressed it under.  I also added a larger piece of eyelet along the lace that was on the sheet.

I used basting spray under the cat image to hold it in place while I top-stitched it on.

I finished the pillow with more of the sheet fabric on the back and an invisible zipper at the bottom.  I put a down pillow form inside & it feels all soft and squishy….just like Toonces 🙂  I love how it turned out.  Now every time I walk into my bedroom I see this pillow and it makes me smile 🙂

 
It matches the other vintage sheet pillowcases I made!