Hankies on Point

By Janis Bullis

Don't hide your vintage hankies in a drawer! Use them to embellish a pretty pillow for the bedroom instead. Add vintage or vintage-look buttons for embellishment to keep the folds in place.

Finished Size
18 inches square, including flange

Materials

• 5/8 yard 4 4/45-inch-wide medium-weight pink fabric for the pillow front and back
• 5 (12-inch-square) vintage or reproduction hankies
• 5/8 yard tear-away stabilizer
• 14-inch-square knife-edge pillow form
• 1 (1 1/4-inch-diameter) shank-style button for the center
• 17 assorted small shank-style buttons, 1/4 -- 1/2 inch in diameter
• All-purpose thread to match fabrics
• Heavy-duty button and carpet thread
• Dollmaker's needle
• Air-soluble fabric marker
• Basic sewing tools and equipment

Cutting

• From the pink fabric, cut two 19-inch squares.
• Cut (20) 1 x 14-inch strips of stabilizer

Assembly
Use 1/2-inch-wide seam allowances.
1.	With right sides facing, sew the two pink fabric squares together, leaving a 12-inch-long opening in the center of one edge for turning. Trim the seam allowances to 3/8 inch, clip the corners and turn right side out. Press the outer edge; turn under and press the opening edges.
2.	On the pillow front, use an air-soluble fabric marker to draw a flange stitching line 2 inches in from all four edges. Pin the layers together and stitch, leaving a 12-inch-long opening opposite the first one (Figure 1).
3.	Adjust the sewing machine for a scalloped satin stitch. (If you don't have this stitch, you can eliminate this step and use them as hemmed.) With stabilizer underneath each edge of a hanky, stitch just inside the hemmed edge. Tear away the stabilizer and carefully trim the hanky close to the scallop stitches -- without cutting the stitches. Repeat with the remaining hankies.
4.	Center one hanky on the pillow front and attach only to the top layer by hand-sewing a button at each corner (Figure 2).
5.	Fold each of the remaining hankies in half twice diagonally (Figure 3).
6.	Position the hankies on top of the pillow top as shown in Figure 4 and sew the points in place, catching only the hanky and the pillow front -- not the pillow back.
7.	Sew three buttons to the hankies at each pair of edges where they meet as shown in Figure 4. Do not sew buttons to the hankies at the edge where the openings are. Catch the folded edges of the two hankies and the bottom hanky and pillow top in the stitching.
8.	Insert the pillow form through both openings. Fold the hankies out of the way and pin the pillow cover layers together at the innermost opening. Complete the stitching. Backstitch at the beginning and end to secure. Sew buttons in place to secure the loose edges of the hankies as you did at the other edges.
9.	Using heavy-duty thread and a long dollmaker's needle, sew the large button in place on the top of the pillow and catch a small one in place on the back. Stitch through all layers, pulling the thread taut to make an indentation in the center of the pillow (button tufting).

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Copyright © May 2007 Sewing Savvy magazine. All rights reserved.