Duct Tape Valentine Pillow

Ah nothing says "I will stick with you forever" like a duct tape heart pillow! This is a fun intermediate level duct tape project that can be done in just 2 hours.

Making a good sheet of duct tape is fundamental for making a good looking project.

Take a strip of duct tape about 13 inches long and lay it sticky side up on the cutting board. Then take another strip the same length, hold it between your hands and let it droop. Lay it down from the center going out. Then take another piece the same length and cover the other half. Now flip over the 3 strips and cover the edges with a slight over lap. Continue flipping the piece over till you get to a foot wide sheet. Next fold over the sticky edges starting in the middle working you way to the ends.

Make 2 sheets

Here we add 1 layer of pink to each sheet on one side only. While layering the pink make sure to overlap onto the previous piece of pink duct tape. Now tape together the two sheets with only a few pieces, and make sure the pink is facing out.

Draw a large heart on the duct tape with a black sharpie, ( it come off easily with some alcohol). Cut out the heart shape with heavy scissors. (shorter scissor blade length = better cutting power)

Re-tape the sheets together with only 2-3 small strips, you will remove these later. Using a Leather Hole Punch make holes with the largest setting, every half inch. I bought my hole punch from home depot a couple years ago it was the best one on the market at the time and cheapest.

We have to spruce up the heart now and really make it beat! We have to make a one sided sheet here, same principle as earlier. Lay strip of white duct tape sticky side down on a cutting board. Take another strip and overlap the first by a couple millimeters. Keep adding strips sticky side down till get a 8 inch square. Trace out a heart with a black magic marker. Instead of using scissors like we did with a regular sheet, which would horribly fail if we tried it now. We need to use a precision knife with a sharp tip and cut out the trace. Please get help and use caution here. Once cut out peel away the scrap. Peel off the heart and place it on the pillow.

Making a Duct tape rope is similar to making a duct tape sheet, the difference is here we join them end to end instead of it's width. Start with a strip 8-12 inches long and lay it sticky side up on the cutting board. Take another strip 3 inches longer and lay it on top of the first with all the over hang on one side ( I do it on the right). Now flip the two over and grab a strip about 8-10 inches long and cover the sticky side of the 3 inches (and a little extra overlap of both). With another strip cover the sticky side and leave a couple inches sticky, flip over and repeat till you get a rope about 65 inches long.

Now we have to cut it down to size so we can thread it through the hole we made. There are 2 ways of doing this step I use both at various times.

1. Scissors, to free hand cut it along it length to a width of 3-4 mm or 3/8th inch.

2. Exacto knife, a cutting board, and a straight edge ruler. Using the ruler as a guide I cut the strip to 3 mm cutting only a foot at a time, and feeding the rope through and realign for each cut along the way. Its important while doing this to apply a significant amount of pressure to the ruler to keep everything aligned.

Now the fun part... hand sewing it all together. Take the rope you just made and cut the tip at a shallow angle, this will make it easier to thread. Start your first thread and tie a knot at the end, this will act as an anchor. I pull it through the back and around the side and back under. It gets pretty rhythmic once you get going. I started the thread about 4 holes from center. I stopped on the other side with 4 holes till center for space for filling.

We gotta make this flat thing into a pillow now. Stuffing will be fun to make (maybe). Tear off strips of duct tape about 1 foot long and crumple them up. Get a decent pile going, then start stuffing the pillow from back to front. I left the gap in the pillow stitching big enough for my hand to fit in there and pack in the stuffing. Once filled finish the stitching and knot off the end and cut off the excess.

Congratulations you did it! its not so bad once you commit to sit down and do something, remember once you're over the first 15 minutes you get into the zone. don't quit before you start!