Awaiting the Tooth Fairy

About 2 weeks ago Sarah came to me and said her tooth hurt.  She's 5.5.  I told her to open up, and sure enough the bottom middle 2 teeth are wiggly, one more than the other.  I sighed once again at the thought that my first little tiny baby is growing up and getting big, but then I got all giddy at the thought that we now had a project to take on!  Tooth Fairy Pillow!!!

What is a Tooth Fairy Pillow?  Well, it's a little pillow (size & shape vary depending on your taste) with a pocket on the front.  Kid puts tooth in the pocket.  Fairy takes tooth & deposits $$$ in the dark of night.  It allows for the Fairy to do her work without disturbing a sleeping child.  My mom made one for me when I was a kid and I thought it would be nice to make one for Sarah.

We went to the fabric store to pick something out, and after perusing stuff with sequins & lifelike horses plastered all over, I convinced her of a print of wands would be perfect.  It is a Tooth FAIRY pillow, right?  She's probably got a wand.  So we picked up a yard of that plus a yard of coordinating pink fabric.  And we picked up some fluff to fill it.

As always step one is to wash & dry & iron the fabric.  I'll admit I don't always do this but my stuff usually turns out a bit better if I do.

I had a plan in my head of what it would look like, so I cut out 2 rectangles of the print.  Roughly 8.5" x 11".  Yep I used a piece of paper as a template.  I cut a bit larger for seam allowances.

I cut out 4 strips of pink, about 4" wide.  Two were trimmed to 24" and two were trimmed to 33".  These are for the ruffle.

I also cut out a little 4" square of the print and a 4x5" rectangle of the pink.  This is for the pocket.

Starting with the ruffle, I sewed the strips together to form a long loop.  I did it like this 24" to a 33" to a 24" to a 33" and then close the loop.  Being careful not to twist the fabric into a moebius loop.  That just wouldn't work.  I set the ruffle aside.

Moving over to the pocket I sewed the short side of the little pink rectangle to the right side of the printed little square.  I set this aside.

I trucked up to the ironing board and did a little pressing.  On the ruffle: I folded the loop/strip in half creating a skinny loop with the end-to-end seams on the inside.  On the pocket: I flipped the pink fabric up over the print, putting the "right" side out and creating a bit of a cuff on the pocket and pressed it down.  Then I pressed in the edges & bottom of the pocket to make it tidy since I'd be top-stitching it to the front of the pillow.

Back down to work.  I pinned the pocket to the front of the pillow and sewed it in place.

The next step is tricky.  I pinned down that huge loop onto the backside of the pillow.  Right side up, unfinished edge of the ruffle out.  I made sure that it didn't twist and that the loop seams were in the corners.  It was kinda tricky to get the ruffle to be evenly spaced, but eventually I got it "good enough".

I flipped it over to see how the ruffle looked - then I flipped it back over to make some adjustments before continuing.

Note:  if you are actually an accomplished or knowledgeable seamstress, you may know of a better/easier/correct way to do this, but I just kinda figured it out

Then I pinned the front of the pillow on top of there, right side down.

I then stitched this whole mess leaving an opening on one side.

Turning the nearly finished pillow right-side-out, I was relieved to see that it looked pretty much how I imagined it.

I added my fluff and hand-stitched the opening closed.




This is the first pillow I've ever made and it turned out ok.  I think next time around I'll probably do a pillow & pillow case to make it look prettier (so no ugly hand-stitched seams are visible).  The whole project took about 1-1.5 hours including the hand sewing.


And now we're all ready for the Tooth Fairy!