I have a little, about 20%, Norwegian blood in my background, according to my Ancestry.com DNA profile, so as we’ve been watching the Winter Olympics, I have been referring to Norwegians as “my people” when they win, which is just about all the time. My husband, in one of those I-have-money-to-burn moments, bought me a giant Norwegian flag as a kind of a joke. Now what am I supposed to do with that? We don’t even have a flagpole, and if we did, I wouldn’t want to have to explain to the neighbors why we would be flying a Norwegian flag. So, I did the obvious—I made a pillow.
The envelope pillow is one of my favorite ones to make, with either flanges or piping to give the edges some flair. For this one, I chose flanges, because it would extend the flag’s stripes; plus, the soft, satiny flag fabric makes a flattering edge.
Here’s an example of how to make a flanged pillow, the only difference from mine being that I didn’t cut a separate front and back. I just cut a long swath of the flag and overlapped two ends for the envelope part, then only having to sew seams on two sides:
It’s a good idea to make a paper pattern first, so you know how much fabric to leave for the flange and any seam allowances. I cut a large square of freezer paper the size of the front of the pillow, so that I could make sure the cross pattern was located where I wanted it—just a little off center as it is on the flag.
Now, I hope there aren’t Irish, British, and German flags in the mail
My Sewing Projects 