Giant Monarch Caterpillow

I love raising monarchs and thought it would be fun to make a huge huggable caterpillow! This is a HUGE caterpillow measuring just about 3 feet long. I raise monarchs every year and the largest the actual caterpillars get is about 2-3 inches. This is right before they turn into their chrysalis! 

For this project you will need:

- a body pillow, or two smaller pillows.

- fabric: white, yellow (I used a knit) and black. 

- Needle and thread. 

- Sewing machine.

- Projector is helpful as well.

- chenille stems (optional)

The first thing I did was to take plenty of reference photos! I took photos from all angles to make sure I had a good idea of what kind of shapes I needed to make to turn my pillow into a caterpillar. It’s hard to get a good photo of a caterpillar as they like to curl up sometimes, but if you are patient, they will uncurl and usually start marching around.

I transferred my reference photos to my computer and used a cheap home projector to project a  side photo of the caterpillar onto a piece of wood. I made sure my photo was about the size of the pillow I wanted to create. 

Next I got my pillow ready. A body pillow would work well for this project, but I couldn’t find one at the store. You could also buy polyfill if you’d prefer and just stuff the pillow case we are going to make, but that ends up being more expensive. 

I ended up using one and a half regular pillows as that seemed like a good option. To turn two pillows into one and a half pillows, I cut one of the regular pillows in half, straight through the stuffing.

Sew the pillow half to the full pillow. I found it helpful to pinch the pillow together and then use a needle and thread to sew the pillows together to make one long pillow. When the pillows are thoroughly attached, fold them in half lengthwise and sew them into a log shape. This doesn’t have to be done neatly as you’ll cover it anyway.

Lay the pillow log onto your black fabric and cut an elongated oval out of the fabric. You’ll want it to be a little smaller than the bottom of the pillow.

Next, drape the white fabric over the pillow and cut a strip of fabric that will cover the pillow. 

TIP: You can cut a notch into the fabric and then pull the fabric and it will tear a straight line.

Using a sewing machine, I sewed the black oval to the white top leaving the ends open. I stuffed the pillow log into the pillowcase and tucked in the left over long ends into ends of the pillow. 

Next I projected the image of the caterpillar onto the pillow and counted out how many strips I would need to make. You’ll want to make several different thicknesses of stripes, depending on the caterpillar you are using for reference. Keep in mind, each caterpillar is different and yours can be unique just like a real caterpillar!

I decided I needed about 16 black 1.5 inch strips of black so I cut the fabric into strips then used my sewing machine to sew along the seam. Flip the strip right side out and drape over the caterpillar shape to determine how long the strips need to be. Make sure to give a little extra room than expected, just in case there is any fraying. It’s better to have too long of strips than too short!

To create the yellow strips, I measured the widest yellow strip and cut a few strips out the yellow knit fabric that I found at the store. I thought it would be fun for the yellow to be a knit fabric instead of a regular cotton like the white and black. Once I had a few strips of the yellow cut, I draped them over the caterpillar and then folded the fabric under itself to fit within the strips on the image. The nice thing about using a knit fabric is the fabric was much more forgiving and could easily stretch to fit the space I was trying to fill.

Once the strips were roughly the shape and size I needed I started sewing them in place. Since I really was relying on the projection to keep the yellow in place, I started sewing while the projector was on and did a quick running stitch just to hold the pieces in place. I sewed one half of the strips and then left the tails of the thead long so I could go back and tuck the ends in and sew the bottoms up when all the strips were tacked in place.

Once all the yellow strips were in place, I closed up the ends of the caterpillar. I folded the ends up and sewed the yellow onto the black bottom. A lot of tugging and tucking helped make it smooth.

Once the bottom and ends were done, I moved onto the black strips. There were several different sizes of black strips and I started with the larger strips that were about 1 inch wide. I cut 2.25 inch strips of fabric and sewed them into a tube to sew onto the caterpillar. I then turned them right side out and stitched them in place. I found it easiest to start with one size stripe and move onto the others as I went.

Caterpillars have filaments at both the front and back of their bodies. The longer ones are in the front. Add these in and the caterpillar is all done!

This caterpillow is huge compared to a regular caterpillar. It measures just over 3 feet long where a regular caterpillar is just 2 inches. Hope you enjoyed seeing how I made it come to life!