Pillow Talk

I'm working on letting off a little creative steam. Which hopefully will help kick up the heat here in Wisconsin. It's snowing again. 

Last week I picked up a pillow sham to match my niece's new quilt. I used the fabric to recover her desk chair and tucked away the scraps for the possibility of a new pillow as well.

Right off the bat this morning (hey... it was before noon...just) I hauled my sewing machine up from storage in the basement and took a look at the leftover scraps of sham. I had three full squares and three slivers left.

I had hoped there would be more left, in a bigger block, and I could just sew a backing on. This would not work with what was left. I began to deconstruct. I took the pieces apart and even removed all the quilted stitching as some of it had began to unravel. I removed the edging, the lining, and the backing. Let me just say that deconstructing is not the most enjoyable part of a project.

But then I resewed the quilting and the quilted pieces together. I measured what I had and compensated with extra backing material to create a standard pillow size. I needed to quilt that pink top and bottom piece and attach to the original sham squares.

Then I cut the original lining to fit inside and cut the backing to the new size, keeping intact the original closure. Easy peasy, right? It's all coming together now!

Now into my fourth hour on this project, I tackled what would be the most frustrating... the edging. I still don't even want to talk about it. I feel like someone more experienced in sewing probably knows how to do this more easily, but I'm a sewing novice. Needless to say, I reattached the edging and ended up with the lovely boudoir sham you see pictured. Just don't look too closely!

I'm hoping for something a little simpler for the other niece. Tomorrow's a new day full of pillow possibilities!