A Rather Sweet Christmas Story

I think this is a rather sweet Christmas story, just a week or so late.

A young mother wrote to me on Etsy back in November.  She asked if I could make a child, mini-sized dog bone pillow.  She went on to say that her two year old son carried her big dog bone pillow EVERYWHERE.  She wanted to the pillow to have Mickey and Minnie Mouse on it so she found some fabric she liked on-line and I purchased it for her custom order.  I was so excited to make a  mini-dog bone shaped pillow that I made up a prototype right away.  Above, you can see a smaller green (Green Bay Packers) pillow along side a normal size dog bone shaped pillow (brown with foxes).  The green pillow was still too long so I sent out to make another prototype.

The second pillow in red and white above (University of Oklahoma), was just right.  When the Mickey and Minnie fabric arrived, I made up a little pillow for the little boy. Sweet!

Right around the time I mailed off the mini-pillow, I got a custom order request from a man.  He asked rather cryptically,

I have a question. Are you able to take a shirt and sew it to a pattern before stitching together? I'll explain in next message.

In the next message, the man went on to identify himself as the husband of the young mother who had ordered the Mickey and Minnie pillow from me a few weeks back.  Then he said,

I have a shirt that when we first got together I had to spray with Cologne for her to sleep when I left to go back home and would like to have a bone pillow made out of it if possible. It's a jersey shirt.

Wow, what a guy.  What a thoughtful and romantic gift idea for his wife!

So me mailed me the shirt.

 

And I made a pillow. I noticed the shirt had some sort of embroidered brand label on the lower corner of the shirt front so I asked if I should use that in the shirt and he said yes. He said there was a snag in the fabric on the front of the shirt as well and asked that I try to include that in the pillow if I could.  Apparently, the snag has some sentimental value as well.  I lined the pillow with a layer of white broadcloth fabric to give the pillow more structure, otherwise the jersey fabric would have been too stretchy to stuff and the pillow would have been lumpy.

I really liked how the pillow turned out.  You can see I used the embroidered label on the pillow's strap/handle. I have to tell you this pillow was a real challenge; working with the stretchy jersey fabric was difficult.  Plus I was just a bit nervous since I did not want to ruin this shirt that had a lot of sentimental value to such a sweet, sweet couple.

Before Christmas, I got a nice note from the young mom. She sent a photo of her son smiling and lying down with his Mickey and Minnie pillow. She said he really loves it  She said she just couldn't wait to give him the pillow so she gave it to him right away, instead of waiting until Christmas. 

I have not heard back from the couple since I mailed off the pillow made with the jersey shirt.  I like to imagine that the husband gift wrapped the gift nicely for his wife and she opened it Christmas morning or maybe Christmas Eve.  And that she loved it and appreciated the romantic and thoughtful gift her husband had made especially for her. 

... and may they live happily every after...