Peacock-Inspired Ring Pillow

A good high school friend of mine is getting married, and I wanted to create a special gift for her. The theme is peacock-inspired. No actual birds were harmed in the making of this ring pillow :-)

The pattern I used was by Lesley Teare: 101 Weekend Cross Stitch Gifts (ISBN 0 7153 1945-0), but I changed the colors in the pattern to reflect the bride's theme.

After finishing the cross stitch pattern, I added a long length of purple ribbon by cross stitching over the ribbon and trimmed it with a button to neaten it up (It didn't look so polished with the cross stitch in the middle of the ribbon. It looked like it was missing something).

 I finished it into a pillow by cutting around the design (with enough left for the back) and whip stitched it on three sides. I stuffed the it with polyfill stuffing that I bought at a craft store.

The colors of threads I used were purple, bright blue, and lime green. I like that I was able to incorporate the blue thread into the pillow, so it can be her "something blue" if she so chooses.

This was a relatively easy project to make. If I could make one change though, it would have been to have used my sewing machine to sew up the edges instead of hand stitching it. This is because the aida cloth I used was rather stiff, and it was hard to sew the corners where the fabric overlapped. I also think it would have been neater and quicker to use the sewing machine.