Simple (Christmas) Throw Pillows
My parents have a family room in the basement devoted to their collection of Mid-Century Modern antiques and collectibles. They decorate this room for Christmas—Retro Christmas. You saw last week how I pulled from that inspiration to make them some placemats. I also made them some simple throw pillows for the room in the basement.
I’m not sure why I decided to make them a couple pillows… except that while I was getting more fabric for the placemats I saw these gems. They wouldn’t work in my placemats, but I knew I had to get them.
I couldn’t pass up the Mid Century Modern looking Santa Claus or Santa in a train. It’s like the manufactures knew my parents and knew I’d be looking for fabric for them. At the cut counter I had the lady give me a ½-yard of each without a definite idea of what to use them for. She recommended I make something like pillows and I ran with it. Even though I’ve struggled with how to make a pillow with a pillow form.
If I learned anything from the Jello disaster, it was to go simple on a first time project. So I made some very simple pillows.
The advantage of giving your parents your “first” projects is that they don’t mind so much if they're a little goofy. Mom was the recipient of my first knitting project in college—it was a pitiful scarf that was altogether too long and the second end was double the width of how it started. Even though it was the worst scarf, she still loved it and wore it.
These didn’t turn out as bad as that. But they’re also not perfect.
I did prewash the fabric for this project because I didn’t know how often (or easily) they’d be washed after becoming pillows. After I washed and ironed them, I folded them in half with the good side inside.
With the pillow form on top of the fabric, I traced a circle. A rough circle.
I used the sewing machine to sew 1/4-inch inside the line and left a gap to put the pillow inside.
The circle was too big. So I took the pillow out and sewed another seam inside the first seam.
Once I had one pillow pattern figured out, I used it to draw the circle on the other material.
After both circles were sewn, I cut little notches out of the seams so it wouldn’t bunch up funny was it was turned inside out.
I stuffed the pillows inside and did a whipstitch over the gap to seal them up.
Simple. And still fun. It’s too bad they’re so seasonal. I guess I’ll just have to make some more pillows—maybe next time I’ll try something square!
P.S. I promise this is the last Christmas post for a while! After this week I'll be back to working on new projects. :)
