If I can make one, toucan make one, too!

Yikes. Sincere apologies for that pun, I don't know what came over me! Anyway ... I've proclaimed my love for Vera Neumann before, so I'll just skip over that part and go straight to the point of this post: I made a pillow, inspired by a Vera Neumann sketch of a toucan.

A while back, Anthroplogie did a Vera Neumann-inspired line of products, and the bird tray was my favorite of all the items. I've already copied that cute toucan once before ... 

I painted my own version of it and hung him in our very-hard-to-photograph downstairs bathroom.

And even though my pillow isn't 100% done (I'm having zipper issues), I thought I'd go ahead and post the how-to! Here's what you'll need:

• glue (I used a glue gun)
• sturdy fabric (for the pillow)
• three assorted fabrics (for the bird)
• about 4 squares of felt
• scissors
• embroidery floss
• fabric paint (optional)
• the normal pillow-sewing stuff

I cut my fabric squares 20"x20", and just used scraps for the bird. If you don't have any fabric scraps, you could always go buy 3 fat quarters.

I hand-drew the pattern onto the fabric for the sections of my bird, but I thought I'd do my best at making a pattern just for you guys! So don't go sayin' I never did nothin' nice for ya'll.

I made felt pom-poms for the corners of my pillow. There are already about a million tutorials online about how to make these, so I won't add another one to the mix, but basically I used 3 circles per pom, folded a strip of felt in half, doubled the circles over, scrunched them up and sewed them to the folded-over strip of felt.

My circles were about 3" across.

I painted a random square pattern on to the back of the pillow, and surrounding the bird on the front of the pillow.

I tacked the pieces of the bird down using a little hot glue, then hand-stitched around the edges using contrasting-colored embroidery floss for an extra-handmade look.

In hindsight I wish I hadn't used quite such a bold pink for the poms. I always get carried away when it comes to hot pink! But I'm still happy with how it turned out:) Now I'm hatching (pun intended) plans for a companion pillow or two.

Ta-ta for now! And wish me luck with that zipper.