Pillow Cat

A promise made is a debt unpaid…
— Robert W. Service

I would rather be accused of breaking precedents than breaking promises.
— John F. Kennedy

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man’s word should be as good as his bond; that character — not wealth or power or position — is of supreme worth.
― J.D. Rockefeller

Once upon a time, I promised the grandbaby I’d make her a Pillow Cat. Pillow cat, for those of you who are not subjected to children’s programming on Netflix, is one of the cats on the children’s show, Gabby’s Dollhouse. This house is not, as one would expect, filled with dolls, it’s filled with cats.

This is a screen shot from the show:

Looks pretty easy, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. *insert maniacal laughter here*

The first time I went to Fabricland to look for material, I did not think to have a picture with me, I was sure I could remember what colours I’d need. I may have tried to look up an image of pillow cat on my phone – which is not ideal because the colours don’t always show up properly, but it’s the only excuse I have for why I would have bought bright blue instead of green, and why the light pink didn’t make it into the mix at all.

But those were the colours I had, and I had them well before Christmas but I kept putting it off. So then I promised the grandbaby that I’d make it for her for her birthday. So a week before her birthday I pulled out the material I had, consulted the internet, and made plans to go back to Fabricland the next day for the pink and green material I was lacking.

I started with the face, figuring once that was done the rest would be a cake walk. It took me two days to do the face. I started with the lines on the forehead and it took me like five tries to get them straight.

During this time I was consulting the internet for images, which were hard to find, to work from. Most of these images were of plush Pillow Cats for sale on Etsy. They were a little pricy, otherwise I would have cheated and bought her one instead.

Anyway, one of the things these Pillow Cats had in common were the faces were embroidered on. Okay, I could do that. So I started with the eyes. Or rather I started with one eye. Four hours later I was still working on that eye. The birthday deadline was getting closer and at the rate I was going I was still going to be embroidering when it came. So I decided to do fabric eyes instead and spent another hour and a half picking out the embroidery I’d done.

I might add at this point that I broke my glasses last week and was having to use my reading glasses to thread the needles. Then I’d have to take them off again because I can only use them for really close work.

I used Stitch Witchery and black and white satin to create the eyes, and I was pleased enough with the results that I used a pink cotton for the cheeks. In retrospect I should have gone for the darker pink, but it is what it is. I did embroider the nose, which is why it's slightly off kilter.

The body was straight forward sewing, or it would have been if my sewing machine hadn't decided it didn’t like the stitch I was using and started having a hissy fit. Not half as bad as the hissy fit I was having because it was the day of the birthday and I was supposed to be delivering the finished product the following day.

It was at this point I realized I might have overestimated the size of my Pillow Cat. Well, it was supposed to be a pillow, wasn’t it? A really big pillow as it turned out. I had to go to Walmart for the stuffing, and came home with two of those long body pillows. And even at that, I also used the stuffing from one of our extra pillows for the face and butt. And a second pillow gave its life for the legs and tail.

And here is the finished product:

And this is what made it all worth it:

Now pardon me, I have an afghan to finish. :-D