Scrappy Pillow

As I mentioned in previous posts, I was given a lot of scraps (some true scraps, some rather large and I wouldn't call them scraps) from David's mom. I have been looking for projects to use a lot of them because my bin is starting to get rather full. I found a scrappy pillow in a library book I wanted to make but the instructions weren't very clear and I wasn't sure of the technique they were using. So I did something similar but my own design. I did buy a pillow form but next time I will get a pillow from Goodwill or something to recover. It's an 18 inch pillow that I plan to use for the back of my sewing chair since, especially being pregnant, my back needs more support when I work for a long time.

The front is random sizes and shapes of the scraps in all different directions and ways. As David says, it's a Jamie original. I did run into the problem of not knowing how to do corners (a set in seam I believe they're actually called) so then I started overlapping things and not everything is sewn with right sides together. I also tried to use different stitches on the front to add to the scrappy look. I think the zigzag stitch worked really well with this. So I just kept adding things until it was big enough (19 inches at the smallest points) and then I cut all the sides straight.

The back is two 15 x 19 panels of strips going two different directions. In the future, I would've made them smaller so you could see more of both of them but this was a learning project. This part was much easier and took less planning than the front. I also forgot to hem the last strip that's on top so right now it's fraying and ugly but I may go back and do that (but I'll have to take the pillow out. It does come out rather easy. It's just a hassle to do it again because originally, we sandwiched it wrong and had a wrong side facing out. Seam ripped the whole thing and resewed it so I'm kind of over it.)

The front.

As you may have guessed, there are side pieces you can't see in the picture because of the pillow's poof. Some of my favorite scraps ended up on the edges and you can see very little of them but at least you can see them (in person).

This is the back. The raw edge that I may or may not redo is the black and white thicker strip right before the strips change direction. If I redid this, I would make that top square (with the vertical strips) skinnier so you can see more of the one underneath. The one underneath goes all the way to four inches from the end of the pillow so it seems like a waste to me. It did use a lot of scraps though! I'm still looking for more projects to use more scraps though because you always have plenty of them!