Celebrate Color: Home Decor

And as you can see by the title of my post, like the previous one, I am showcasing something I made this month for the Celebrate Color festivities.  This one fits in the home decor category.

This last Spring a friend brought back a very colorful floor pillow from Thailand.  Unfortunatally it didn't hold up well and a seam ripped causing all this light cotton seed type stuffing to scatter everywhere, adding to the dust bunnies that like to gather in my home.  I couldn't repair it and thought of tossing the whole thing but couldn't bring myself to do it.  So I stuck it in a plastic bag until I could make a new covering.

Eventually, just this month, as I was cleaning stuff out, I found it and decided it was time to fix it so we could use it.  I took some fabric I had on hand and first wrapped the whole thing in that, sewing it up so that there wasn't any chance for the stuffing to get out.  Then I thought I'd use up some scraps to make a cover.  I've been collecting my long strips of fabric for a long time, and this seemed like a great time to do some strip piecing, something I had never done before.

Basically I sewed together the strips until I had a piece big enough to cut into a square.   I cut the square so the strips would lie diagonal.  I made four of these and sewed them together for the top of the pillow.  I quilted the top peice with my machine.  Then I sewed on the sides and a back and it was done.  If it wasn't for wanting to put in a zipper (which I did) it would've really been a quick project.  But learning something always takes longer.  It's not the best zipper, but it's not the worst either.  Here's the finished product.

Here's Malachi trying it out.