A Pillow for a Baby Cowboy

One of my pledge sisters from back in our days at Oklahoma State University (Kappa Alpha Theta love!) is having a little one - very soon!  Another of our sweet pledge sisters, Boz, suggested we all send her gifts for Baby Caleb, which she compiled altogether into one big package - a shower in a box!

I've made baby shoes before, but those were all for girl babies, so I wanted to make something a little bit different this time.  Since our alma mater's colors are orange and black, I knew I wanted to start with that.

First, I made a bunch of 2 inch strips from my two fabrics.

I sewed those strips together, and then slice them up in 2-inch strips going in the opposite direction.  I rearranged the strips to get a quilt pattern:

I sewed all those rows up too, and voila!  I'm not even going to pretend all my squares matched up in the end, but hey - that is why I make clothes and not quilts.

Then I printed off a cute but manly font with his name (I used The Only Exception, which I downloaded from dafont.com):

 I cut out all the letters...

 and traced his name onto some chambray.

Then I cut on the inside of my tracing (so I didn't get any marker lines), and pinned it to my quilting.  This was going to be the front of my pillow.

I sewed all the way around all the edges of the name, and then went back and sewed around where the holes would be in the a, e, and b.

 I cut out a piece of chambray in the same size as the quilting, and sewed that to the quilting piece all the way around, leaving a 4-inch piece open for the stuffing.  Then I stuffed it full!

 I sewed up the open edge...

 And, here it is!  A personalized little pillow for Baby Caleb.

I love the contrast of the chambray backing with the orange, black, and white quilting.  I hope this little boy grows up to be a Cowboy (or even a cowboy!), but even if he doesn't, I know very well that he will be loved to the greatest degree by his parents.

Congrats, Skyler and Chris!