Remembrance Pillows made for a friend

This past summer, my friend Debbie's mother Grace passed away after a long and productive life filled with lots of family, friends, faith and love. Debbie decided to save a few articles of her mother's clothing, and had kept them in a bag just waiting to decide what to do with them. She recently told me about her idea to make something from the pieces she had saved, and she asked if I would be interested in the project. Of course I was, and here is what Grace's four tops have become...


This is the front of two of the Remembrance Pillows...


...and this is the back of the same two pillows. I cut the pieces for the pillow backs out of the section of each top where the buttons or zipper openings were so that the covers could be taken off and washed if necessary. You can also see that the front patch pocket on the blue flowered denim top was left in place as well.


Here are the fronts of the other two 12 inch pillows...


...and here are the backs of the same two. The purple top was a cozy zippered jacket, so I left the zipper intact just like the buttons on the other pillows.


Using small pieces of fabric from the shirts, I cut out heart shapes in three different sizes and appliquéd two of them onto each pillow top with hand-stitching.


I tried to do each one a little bit differently from the others so each pillow would be unique.


Grace was a very tiny lady so I was only able to make four 12 inch pillows, one for each of her daughters. But with the leftover fabric, I was able to make 3 other very small pillows with hearts on them as well. These small pillows Debbie will give to some of Grace's grandchildren.








The white blouse had the prettiest white lace on the sleeves, so I made two little sachet bags by cutting about 4 inches from the end of each sleeve and stitching the bottom edge closed. Then I ran narrow ribbon through the lace to make drawstrings. These little bags could be filled with nice smelling soaps or potpourri and hung in a closet or placed in a drawer.

What a nice way to memorialize a loved one, making something old and used new again. I think Grace would be happy to see a few pieces of her clothing used in this way.

Happy Stitching!

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