Poinsettia Ring Pillow Cover

As a part of the Holiday USA/UK Sizzix Blog Hop, I made this Poinsettia Ring 16" Pillow Cover.  

To make this pillow, I used the Sizzix 4" finished Tumbler Die.  I cut 24 tumbler shapes using all the soft green charms from a charm pack of Aneela Hoey's Cherry Christmas, Odds and Ends Happy Thoughts in Leaf, Olive Kona, Chartreuse Heath, and Juniper Grunge. 

I sewed each row together from left to right.  

I ironed the seams to the right in the top row, to the left in the second row, and so forth so that the seams nested together nicely when I sewed the rows together.

I then applied fusible fleece to the wrong side of the pillow front and quilted with straight lines.  I squared up the pillow to measure 16 1/2" on all sides.

I made a group of seven poinsettias out of wool felt from National Nonwovens using the Sizzix Tattered Poinsettia die by Tim Holtz.  I cut the largest flower on the die from green felt for the leaves and then cut all the flower shapes on the die from the red felt to form the flower.  The flower centers are composed of clusters of french knots made using Aurifil's wool thread.  I arranged the poinsettias in a wreath shape and tacked them in place with hand stitches just through the green felt leaves.

I finished off the pillow with an invisible zipper from Zipit.  

If you are looking for more holiday pillow ideas, I have a tutorial for another one that will appear on the Sizzix blog on December 7th.

Here's the line up for the day, make sure you check them all out to get some truly festive inspiration...

Tammy Tutterow
Paula Pascual
Elina Strömberg
Anna-Karin Evaldsson
Loredana Bucaria
Gretchen Schmidt
Hilary Kanwischer
Jan Hobbins
Jeanne Streiff
Tammy Roberts
Tiffany Johnson