Sesame Street Pillows

Written by: Caroline

I’ve been attempting to be good about not adding more craft supplies to my stash without using the ones I currently have. So far, it’s going great. I bought a bunch of yarn to make a baby blanket for Sweet Pea, I found a really good deal on a ton of yarn on Facebook Marketplace and then they dropped the price so I ended up with four totes of yarn that I’ll turn into hats or scarves for donations hopefully, and then I found the subject of today’s blog post: Off the Hook Sesame Street Character face kits. I came across the yarn in one of the yarn destash groups that I belong to on Facebook and thought about it for a day or two before I decided to finally purchase it. There was a project brewing in my head and I just had to make it.

I had the yarn, if you’re fine with calling it that, delivered to our P.O. box and ordered additional “yarn” from Lion Brand’s website. I hadn’t used Off the Hook yarn before and wanted to do some research. While I was getting Cookie Monster, Grover, Oscar, and Big Bird from my destash group, I discovered that I was missing Elmo. I also needed a backing if I was going to turn these into pillows. I picked out some plain grey Off the Hook as a backing and was excited to start my project.

So I mentioned that I don’t necessarily think of Off the Hook yarn as yarn. This is because it doesn’t have the structure of yarn. It isn’t spun and it has a set of threads that go through it to make it into a bunch of loops all attached to each other. They call it Off the Hook because you don’t need a crochet hook or knitting needles to work with it so it’s great for beginners or quick projects. It was super easy to work with and by the end of the project I had come around and was starting to like this style of crafting material.

I started this project in October but didn’t finish it until early January when we were in quarantine. I worked on other projects which slowed me down, but by working while riding in the car, watching tv, and soon learned not around Lilly because she could recognize the characters I was making progress. Close to Christmas, I had some of the faces done and one of the backs. I decided to focus on getting at least two pillow covers done in time for Christmas morning instead of all of the faces. That meant that under the tree Christmas morning Lilly and Elliot could snuggle with Cookie Monster, Oscar, and Elmo, Grover soon followed, but Big Bird took his time.

Before Christmas, I knew that if I was going to make my own pillows I needed to get pillow fluff. Elliot and I went out to Michaels and acquired some pillow stuffing but I figured I had the fabric I needed at home. I have no photos of our excursion because with Christmas quickly approaching there were no carts available so Elliot was in one arm while I was trying to stuff stuffing into my bag with the other. It was frustrating because it was harder to do things, but it did mean that I couldn’t pick up any extras on my way to checkout.

While we were in quarantine, Joe’s parents watched the kids one day because they were feeling better and I needed a rest day. For me, it was a chance to relax and whip out my sewing machine taking over the whole kitchen table. I wanted to get the pillows done and, with the kids out of the house, it was my only chance to use the sewing machine without having to hunker down in the basement. I measured my pillowcases and estimated the size of the pillows.

Throughout the day I blasted podcasts or early 2000’s alternative music and took over the kitchen table and counter with supplies and works in progress. Joe was working from home and when he came up for lunch he was nervous about the state of our house. I reassured him that I would be done before dinner and true to my word I had the kitchen cleaned up by the time we had to leave to pick up the kids.

Lilly and Elliot weren’t blown away by the morphing of their pillowcases into pillows but since their completion, they’ve been found all around the house with the pillows. They’re the perfect snuggle size and stuffing level for two growing toddlers. Eventually, I’m sure Lilly will stuff them in her big girl bed and keep them away from Elliot, but by then Elliot will have his own pillow toy. That’s a story for a different time.

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