Ring Bearer Ideas

A good friend of mine in Philadelphia is getting married at the end of this month.  She purchased a heart for her son to carry down with their rings on it but when she got it, it just was not the size she expected.  She's having a rustic wedding so I googled a bunch of ideas.  She let her son pick which one he liked, even though it wasn't necessarily the one she liked the best.  And then I hinted that "someone I knew" would love to make it for her.

So I give you my first experience in making a ring bearer pillow!

First off was a trip to David's Bridal to pick up a color swatch of her bridesmaids' dresses.  Then, a trip to JoAnn's. 

Materials:

• fabric (I picked up a yard of a thick linen, just in case.)
• flowers
• ribbon
• stuffing
• twine (I think it was actually jute that I bought.)
• hot glue gun
• sewing machine!!!! (This is one of my first projects since I bought my new sewing machine!)

• and sticks (What???  That's the surprise that came later!)

The materials trip was combined with lots of pictures sent to her because I wanted this to be perfect and exactly what she wanted. The first decision we made was the fabric choice. 

We ended up choosing the linen on the left.

Fabric swatch with the burlap

  Then it was a choice of what flower to use.

The wisteria with the rose

The wisteria with the winning ranunculus

The last decision, before she just handed it over to me and said "I trust your decision," was the ribbon.  I guess I deleted the choices we had but I still have a picture of the winning ribbon.  I just liked the idea of a sheer ribbon.

And then finally came the making of the pillow!  Which I don't have pictures of.  I really need to get better about taking pictures as I'm making stuff.  So I give you the sewing machine it was made on!

My new toy!

I started by sewing the ribbon to the outside of one of the pieces of fabric I'd cut.  Then I turned the outsides in and pinned.  I sewed the pillow mostly shut, leaving myself a space to turn it right side out and stuff.  I turned it, stuffed it, and then hand stitched it shut.  I had some issues with the machine closing it up, so I just hand stitched it.  I hope it holds.

After sewing, I wrapped the pillow with a length of jute.  I pulled the flowers off of their stems and hot glued them in place. Then I trimmed the length of the ribbon and secured the ends with some fray check.

Pillow before I trimmed the ribbons

But wait!  I mentioned sticks.  Where are the sticks in this project??  I knew this wasn't the one she liked the most, so I also really wanted to try the style that she liked.  I took a set of decorative sticks and cut them to size, wrapped them together with a length of wire, and then decorated.  

Stick ring bearer "pillow"

And I threw this one in the box to Philly too!  Just in case she can talk her little boy into carrying this one down the aisle.

What projects have you been involved with for someone else's wedding?