Musical Note Pillow

I have been waiting to write this post for a while now. The reason it took so long to write is because I wanted to test a theory.

How it started:

My mother in-law was coming to visit from over seas and offered to get us some pillow covers with her. This made me feel like I needed to step up and make some custom pillows for the house. For me, designing and making pillows was logically the next step. I had tried to head towards that step once before and I failed miserably. I had bought these 18x18 inch pillows from amazon yet I designed and crocheted a pillow cover that was about 7x7 inches. Now that i had visitors coming, It was finally time I give it another try.

I got to work and decided I wanted to make 2 pillows same colours but different designs. The first one I started with was the musical note pillow. I made a 31x31 square design and crocheted it using a 3.5 mm hook. After finishing the pillow I was so happy and proud of how it turned out. My mom, who taught me how to crochet, made an interesting point. She mentioned that I should have made a smaller cover because the pillow will lose some of its fluffiness with time, which would make the cover seem too big. That point was what delayed me from posting.

The Theory:

  • Is the cover going to be too big on the pillow? Is that due to the pillow losing fluffiness or just to the usage of the cover?

Test:

  • Watch the pillow and see the effect over time
  • Make the new design smaller and keep an eye on that

Results:

  • My mom has lots more experience so, of course, she was right.
  • The pillow with the bigger design lost a little of its shape
  • The unexpected thing was I regretted the choice of yarn:
    • I love Caron simply soft and decided to go with that yarn for my pillows. As time passed I realized that the yarn is too soft and therefore the weaved ends kept coming out and I had to constantly reweave them back in.
    • The Pillow started looking really old too soon. Within couple of month of usage, I noticed the yarn started to get fuzzy. 

I ended up adjusting the design to 30x30 squares. As for the yarn, I recommend using medium worsted yarn such as red heart or Caron One Pound. The Pattern has 2 sides that are connected together using SC (Single Crochet).

The Pattern:

Front Side:

  • 3.5 mm hook
  • Medium yarn (2 colors)
    • Main background colour 277 m of yarn + Extra for SL (Slip stitch) and cutting for colour changes.
    • Design colour 55 m of yarn + Extra for SL (Slip Stitch) and cutting for colour changes.
  • Needle for weaving the ends
  • Scissors 

Back Side:

  • 3.5 mm hook
  • Medium yarn (2 colors)
    • Main background colour 299 m of yarn + Extra for SL (Slip stitch) and cutting for colour changes.
    • Design colour 33 m of yarn + Extra for SL (Slip Stitch) and cutting for colour changes.
  • Needle for weaving the ends
  • Scissors 

Once the 2 sides are finished you need to SC crochet 3 sides together. Put the pillow inside then close it off by SC crocheting the 4th side.

At each corner I did 3SC to give it that rounded look.

At the sides I made sure the Purple lines where connected with a purple SC to give it a continuous look. 

 To get the written Pattern: