Moon Pillow

I finally got my moon pillow finished along with some other stuff today. That's one of my faults--starting too many projects at the same time. Ah well.
I began by drawing a pattern for the pillow on newspaper. I used to be allergic to newsprint ink, but my daughter says it's a soy ink now. You can even compost your newspapers. Anyway--

I wanted my pillow to be three dimensional, so I knew I'd have to make a couple of extra pattern pieces, rather than just the sides and that's it. So I made a slim strip for the front face, and a wider strip for the back. I cut out the pattern and pinned it to the material (a valence I picked up at a second hand store.) and, leaving a quarter inch sewing margin, cut all that out. Now I had the fabric pieces of the moon.

Now I pinned the front (face) gusset which is a long strip that bends where the nose bends on the moon profile to one side of the moon. Take your time and use lots of pins in the bends, just fitting it all together smoothly.

Right sides together, I sew the gusset on to one side of the moon, then pin it onto the front of the other side and sew. When I've finished with that, it looks like this:

Now with right sides together, sew back gusset strip to the back of the sides, just like you did with the face gusset. ONLY--leave an opening on one side near the bottom to stuff! Turn it right side out, making sure you have both those points completely turned out.
Here's what you'll have:

Now stuff your moon with plenty of polyfil stuffing. I mean, stuff that sucker so there's no limpness anywhere, especially the little points. Then sew the opening closed. I pinned it to help with the hand sewing since my moon was SO stuffed!

So far this is what we've got:

I searched the closets, found an unfortunate old sweater, and absconded with its buttons. (I've always wanted to say that word, absconded.) They made great eyes which I sewed right on, and then hand sewed a couple of eyelids by folding two circles and sewing a tiny bit over the "eyes" near the top arch of the whole eyelid, leaving the lid loose except at the top and corners.

Well, it was cute but not finished. It looked like it was trying to say something. A mouth? You want a mouth?
So I scoured the closets again and found some embroidery thread, and slapped a mouth on and a couple eyebrows too with straight stitching.
Voila, a moon pillow!