What gift should I give to dear friends celebrating their 7^th wedding anniversary? Hmmm… Oh, wait, I know, how about the gift I started making for them 7 years ago for their wedding and never finished!

Here it is ready to be wrapped.

The back.

Why did this pillow take me so long to complete? Because I can embroider, sew basic straight seams, but I can’t sew piping! Sometimes my ideas are bigger than my abilities and I can fake it ’til I make. Not this time.

I had such high hopes for this gift. My friends are bird watchers, so embroidering birds was an obvious theme. The pillow is made of the same color dupioni silk as the dresses that the bridesmaids wore. Perfect, right?

Nope. This project went so wrong.

I ripped it apart, sewed it again, apart, sew, apart, sew, until, out of frustration, I put it in a box and there it stayed. For seven years. I thought of it every year around their anniversary, but my skills had not changed and neither did the state of the pillow.

What the pillow was waiting for was for me to learn how to inkle weave. An inkle band added the perfect finish to what I couldn’t achieve before.

I wove the band with DMC embroidery floss, which gave the band a pretty sheen that matches the silk, then sewed it to the front piece. The design of the pillow is a little different than I initially planned; it was supposed to be a removeable pillow case, but I lost some material taking the piping off again, so it is stitched closed on all sides.

I’m very happy with how it turned out and that it is FINALLY finished. I hope they like it.

Happy anniversary you guys! May you have 7 years times infinity more.

warp, weave, be happy!

Jennifer