 recently posted a comparison video where I showed you guys the differences between the Cricut machines, the Maker, the Explorer Air, and the Joy. In that video I featured a project that I made on each of the machines. And today I'm going to show you how I made the Summer Star pillow using my Cricut Maker. And remember Maker is the only one that can cut fabric that's unbonded because it has the really cool rotary blade. So let's get into the tutorial and I'll show you just how easy it is to make this super cute pillow. To make the super cute little quilted pillow, we need not a ton of materials. Of course you need a pillow form. 18 by 18 inches is what is suggested. This one is only 16 by 16 though. And so if it's not floofy enough for me in the end, I'll just wrap this in some batting and kind of beef it out a little bit more. Just use what you've got or what you can find at Goodwill. Try and find the second hand. It can be very affordable. You'll need four fabrics. So if you look at the design, you can see that they have a white, what is it? A white pink, like a yellow color and an orange. So for the white, I'm going to be using this gold fabric. So that needs to be cut. And all of this is explained in design space. How many of what size you need. So I cut this one 12 inches by the length of the fabric. I always just let it hang off the end. So I'm not having to do too much fussy cutting. And then for the center, I'm going to be using my really pretty right full paper company quilting cotton. This is going to be in place of their pink. And then this is going to be in place of their yellow and this is going to be in place of their orange. So just follow the instructions in the design space about what you need to cut and how big it needs to be. Then you'll need to place them on all of your mats. Some of them do require a 12 by 24, like the longer mats. And then some of them you can just put on your shorter mats as well. And then to add the trim, again, I'm just using what I've got. And magically, I guess probably because I just love these colors, I happen to have three colors of pom pom trim. So if the pillow is 18 inches, I don't think I quite have enough of any of them to go all the way around. So this will cover two sides. This is going to cover, you know, maybe the top and then the pink one will cover the bottom. I'm just going to mix it all together. I think it's going to be, you know, just as cute if they're different on the outside versus all of them being the same. So that's what you need to make the pillow. So let me take you over to the maker so that you can see how all of this is cut. All right, it's time to cut some fabric. I have my maker. I have my rotary blade placed in here. That is what is going to cut the fabric. This is also what makes the maker unique from the other two machines. The maker can cut the most things, then the Explorer air two, and then the joy. This is a little bit annoying, but this project listing is a little bonkers. First of all, the preparation is all correct until you get to step number six and seven. You don't need to cut this many pieces of fabric. You only need one through five. And then when it gets to the cut portion, you only need mats one through seven. So we're going to click make it. It is sorting all of our projects for us. We don't need to mirror anything. So we are going to select continue. We're setting the material to cotton. And then it's going to tell me to put my rotary blade in and start loading my mat. So the very first one is what they are calling white fabric, but for me, it's gold fabric. And similar to the Explorer air, you load it up and then push the flashing arrow button. When you do that, it picks up the mat and then you press the flashing cricket logo. So it's just detecting to make sure I had enough of the fabric on the mat, which I do. And then it's going to start cutting my fabric using the rotary blade. So I'm just going to follow the order of operations as outlined in the design space. I've got all my seven mats ready to go. So we're just going to get all the fabric cut out. And really, it's just a bunch of squares and fun shapes. So it shouldn't take too long. What makes the maker so great is that you get these perfect triangles. I mean, I'm not a quilter. I'm not good with the see-through rulers and angles and math, especially my goodness. So having a machine cut it out for me is great. And maker is the only one that can use the rotary blade. So if you want to cut fabric without pre-bonding it to anything else, the maker is the machine for you. The maker has the most tools, the most capability, the most type of materials, the maker is the Holy Grail. So in order to finish out this pillow, you can kind of see what we've got going on here. But it's really just a combination of a bunch of applique and then sewing the rows and columns together. So we need to applique all of these little individual pieces onto their respective squares. And applique is basically an edge stitch, you guys. For those of you that are garment sewists, you are just going to go and head over to your machine and you are going to edge stitch all the way around all of these little pieces, every single one, so that you have solid square pieces when you are done. So let me show you what that looks like. Okay, I got all of my pieces applique. And neat little trick is I only applique the inner edges, the ones that are matched up with the wrong, with the raw edges. I didn't even bother to edge stitch that. That might make me a bit of a rebel, but I just didn't see the point. So I didn't do it. Okay, so when we put all this back together, it looks like this. Oh, and I have these in the wrong place earlier too, if you couldn't tell that. So I fixed that. Okay, so we bought this now, right? And now all we need to do is sew our rows. So we're going to flip this right sides together, sew along this edge, open it up, then flip this, sew along this edge. And then we will have three distinct rows. Okay, here we are. We've got our rows all done. And you can see that I surged mine because this is a pillow and it's not going to have any kind of lining. And I like to wash my pillows or my pillowcases. I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't have a whole lot of fraying or raw edges going on on the inside. But if you don't have a serger, no big deal, just sew it like you normally would, maybe even zigzag along the edge, if you want to prevent fraying. Also, on the top and bottom row, I pressed the seam allowances out. And on the middle one, I pressed them in. And that is just so whenever we sew our rows together, the seam allowances will alternate and it will be too too bulky. So now that we've got all of our rows done, now we need to do our, I guess we need to finally put it all together. So make sure at this point it's the way that it's supposed to be. It's real easy to get something turned around. So just make sure it's exactly how it's supposed to be. If this is directional, make sure that it's going the direction that you like it. Although I guess technically you could just turn the pillow around. I don't know, whatever. Anyways, so then you take your top row and you were going to sew along this edge to the middle row so that they end up together like this. And then you're going to sew the bottom row up to the middle along this edge so that they end up together like so. All right, here is our beautiful finished pillow front. And now we need to add on our pom-pom trim. So like I said, I don't have enough of any of these to make one go all the way around. So I think I'm going to do pink on top, blue on bottom, and then white on the sides. I don't know how weird can that be? It kind of all goes, right? So, so yeah, I'm just going to go over to my sewing machine and I am going to baste the pom-pom trim onto the edges of the pillows like so where the pom-poms are on the inside right side of the pillow. Not like this, right? Like this. Okay? So yeah, all right. So good news. I was able to only use blue and pink. So I have blue on the sides and pink on the top and bottom. Yay. I have like three pom-poms left. Like that's how little I had left over. But now you need to take your envelope pieces, which I have cut two for this 18 by 18 pillow. I have cut them to 18. It ended up being 18 and three quarters. So 18 and three quarters wide by 12 and three quarters tall. I've got two of them. Then I ended up hemming them. So right sides together, the top one gets laid down first, then this one. So that when you flip it right sides out, that longer layer is at the top of the pillow. All right. So I'm using my zipper, yeah, my zipper foot to attach this piping or attach this trim. It is not easy. It is very frustrating. But take your time with it and the results will be worth it. That's what I'm telling myself. So I'll show you. We're going to sew around all four edges and this is going to be our opening where we turn. So we don't have to worry about leaving any gaps. Okay. Here she is. All done. I'm going to show you what it looks like when you flip it right side out. The pom-poms really are such a fun, cute detail. If you have the patience for it, highly, highly recommend. There is a very good return on joy investment here. When you're doing it, you're like, there's no way this is worth it. But it is. How cute. I'm obsessed, obsessed. All right. Going to get my pillow in and I'll show you guys the final results. How cute did the pillow turn out? This is seriously such an easy project, even for the novice sewist. I hope that you'll give it a try with my tutorial. I have links in the description box to the comparison video so you can learn which Cricut machine is right for you. I also have links to where you can get all of the Cricut materials featured in today's tutorial. Please let me know if you have any questions at all, whether they're about Cricut, the machines, or about this specific project. But that's going to do it for me today. Thank you all so much for watching and I will see you very soon. Bye.