Ta da!!

I did it!

My very first sewing project is complete (unless you're counting the apron I made in 7th grade home ec.). I'm so happy with how it turned out. It was both frustrating and exhilarating...it took me 6 hours! For one pillow! I'm anticipating my next project to be shorter, now that I'm over a lot of the firsts. :)

I ended up doing things a little differently than the girl who posted it on her blog, based on feedback from other people.

Here are the play-by-plays.

• First I washed and dried the fabric.
• Then I started ironing the fabric but since I don't have an ironing board it got a little messy...so I decided just do a quick iron, cut and then fully iron the pieces.
• You don't even want to know how long it took me to measure and cut...well even if you want to know I won't tell you or you'll laugh at me.

• After cutting the pieces, I created the ruffles by basting down the middle and cinching them together. The direction said to cut the ruffle pieces double the length of the pillow. I wish I'd made each piece a little longer since I like lots of ruffles.

• Next, instead of sewing the front and back of the pillow together first and adding ruffles second, I followed suggestions from others and sewed on the ruffles to the top first, in order to get a cleaner edge around the sides.

• Also - next time I would first lay all of the ruffles on before I started to pin. In the end I had to cut the last ruffle a bit skinnier than the others because of fitting problems...you live and learn.

• After sewing the first ruffle on I was ecstatic! It was starting to actually look like the front of the pillow. And here are the finished ruffles.

Next I pinned the ruffled side against the piece of fabric for the back of the pillow and sewed just the two sides of the pillow (not top and/or bottom).

• After sewing the 2 sides, I turned it right side out.

• Before sewing the top, I had to pin the ruffles up (since they hung below where the seam would go)

When I stuffed the pillow form into the case I was so happy with the way it looked...but knew it wasn't over yet. I had to sew the bottom of the pillow together. This is where it got a little hairy.

I know for a clean look you're supposed to hand stitch the hole closed. I decided I wanted to try to machine stitch it (since the ruffles hung down below the base of the pillow and you wouldn't see the bottom anyway).

It didn't work so well...lots of pillow puff, teeny seam allowance...you get the picture. Overall I got the pillow closed but ended up hand stitching part of it that the machine missed...I should have just hand stitched it to begin with, but I seem to like doing things the hard way.

Here are some close-ups

Its new home
Hooray!!

I already have my next project in mind...I'll tell you all about it in my next post.