Tutorial: From T-shirt to Tooth Pillow

A few months ago it started to wiggle, it's now officially progressed to a wobble and I daresay within the next couple of weeks my son's first baby tooth will be gone. To prepare for the momentous occasion Jasper's been trying to make a list of things he thinks the tooth fairy should bring him. I keep telling him it's not like at Christmas with Santa. The tooth fairy doesn't have a big sack full of toys it lugs around or millions of miniature elves to craft them for it. But we keep having these conversations. So I decided to make a tooth pillow with a very small pocket so he can see visually that only something small would fit. Definitely not something Star Wars toy-sized.

To make the pillow we worked with what we had- a too small t-shirt left over from the Doodle- Love Valentine's Day craft project. My sewing machine is out of commission at the moment so I stitched it all by hand. All told though I think the entire pillow, including applique and embroidery took less than an hour. Happy Creating!
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Tutorial: Tooth Fairy Pillow

Tools and Materials

White t-shirt - small short sleeved
White embroidery floss
Red fabric scrap
Red embroidery floss
Black embroidery floss
Fine tip Black Sharpie or fabric marker
Needle
Scissors
Stuffing

Step One: Cutting through two layers of fabric (front and back of t-shirt) cut out right half of a tooth shape. I cut it freehand, however you could sketch out a pattern on paper first. Fold over to the left and use it as a guide to cut out the second (left) half of the tooth. You have a somewhat symmetrical shape.

Step Two: Trim up the shape with your scissors, it doesn't have to be perfect. I actually trimmed mine a little irregular because I didn't like how perfectly symmetrical it looked. The shape looks big but remember you'll be stuffing it later which will puff it out and narrow it a bit.

Step Three: The smart thing would be to do your embellishing at this point, before you stitch your two pillow pieces together. However, I was figuring this out on the fly so I stitched my two pieces together at this point by doing a straight stitch, using the white embroidery floss, leaving about a 1/4" edge allowance. Leave a 3-4" gap to insert stuffing through.

Step Four: Insert stuffing through the gap you left unstitched. Use the eraser tip of a pencil to get it into the tips of the tooth if necessary. When the pillow is the desired thickness and density then straight stitch opening closed.

Step Five: Cut the sleeve off of your short-sleeved white t-shirt and flip it so that the under seam is showing and cut it into the desired pocket shape. Flipping it is a decorative thing. I liked the look of the seam stitching. Using black embroidery floss, stitch it to your pillow with a running stitch.

Step Six: Cut out an arrow from your red fabric and using red embroidery floss,and a running stitch, stitch to your pillow.

Step Seven: Using black floss or your black fabric marker or sharpie add the words "look" and "here". I did the "look" with the floss and the "here" with the marker to give an idea of what they would both look like. Any embellishing is of course optional. My son suggested we add it so that the tooth fairy would know which of his pillows it should look in. I think it ended up looking kind of cool. :)