Santa Pillows

Continuing my love affair with Lella Boutique pillow patterns, I kept with the seasonal theme and set out to make the Sew Jolly Santa pattern.  

I pretty much kept close to the suggested color scheme for the pattern, but instead of gray for the background I went with a pale blue swirl, like whirling, curling snow. This brings to my mind the lyrics from the Let It Go song from the movie Frozen... "The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside". For the white, pink, rose, and coral of Santa's face I stayed with solids. For the hat trim and hat pop-pom, I picked a bit more adventurous print with a white-ish/beige-ish background. This print will also be the backing of the pillows. I am proud to brag that all fabric came from my stash.

Once I cut out the pieces, my tray looked like controlled chaos, an improvement over past Lella Boutique reindeer pillows. It  may seem obvious, but it made a huge difference to clip the Alphabitties to their respective pieces so they did not slid around and under other piles on the tray. The Fat Quarter Shop sells Alphabitties with an integral clip, but my method worked just fine using Wonder Clips with simple Alphabitties.

My biggest struggle was selecting the fabric for the fur of the hat trim and the pom-pom. I wanted white but it needed to be distinguished from Santa's beard and eyebrows. Then of course I thought and rethought and overthought how to fussy cut it for the fur parts. I wanted the pom-pom to coordinate them with the brow trim. This approach worked for two of the three Santas but not for the one on the far left. It had a dark green portion of a Christmas tree in it that weighed too prominently. For that Santa I took out  half Christmas tree pom-pom and substituted in a fussy cut round starburst reminiscent of those peppermint candies. Not it looks like a pom-pom and not half a pom-pom. The time invested carefully picking out those four seams was well worth it.

I especially love the backing fabric. I think my 2026 New Year's resolution is to use fabric that I love now and not save it for some mythical "something special" in the future. There will always be more fabrics that I love that I then will have room to buy. Plus, what I love changes with time and I would hate to pass up a "window of love" only to have a future "window of indifference".

I have pieced three Santa blocks, each about 18" square. I have FMQ'd those I am sending off as gifts but the FMQ of my own I have put on a back burner. One has a clamshell pattern oriented to look like garlands and the other has waves intended to look like rolling hills of snow. I used a very pale blue thread, instead of white, to hint at snow drifts. One has a pom-pom like a red starburst snowball and the other has a pom-pom like pine tree needles. 

I just mailed them off this morning, so now I can spare some time to finish off my own Santa pillow. Since I am undecided on the FMQ pattern, I may try something unique and different. I am considering swirls; I am not very good at those, so this just might be the right-sized project to practice on.