typography challenge - in progress

Here's a quick post to update you on my typography challenge progress. I know the iphone pics are rather bad quality - I'll try to take good-camera pics later on.

I went and cut a brand new piece of fabric for this challenge. At first I thought I'd use an existing pillowcase, but at a closer look I realized it was stained and old. So now I'll be making a square-ish pillow (with - how do you call it - a bevel around the edge?) I think I'll have some fun with improv patchwork around the plain orange too. We'll see how I flow :-)

Here's my text, all aligned and centered and with proper kerning :-)

I pasted it up on an inner glass door, so I can see through the fabric using light, and traced the outline of the letters with pencil.

At first I tried a back stitch (see the upper p in the below photo?) But I didn't like the result.
So I filled in the letters with a grey fabric marker, and outlined it with a running stitch. I like it much better.

I wish I had some freezer paper - I could have used it as a stencil and used fabric paint to get the letters printed on, rather than use the tedious fabric marker which will probably dry out really fast.

And here I am in an A-line skirt with patch pockets that I drafted myself.

And here's the project after a bit more progress. I think I might add the running stitch only around the letters of the word "optimization", and leave the rest as is, just grey fabric marker. What do you think?