How to sew a Ruffle Flower Pillow

Ok, the New Year is here and  I’ve got my resolution  in place:  set small goals and write down how I am going to work toward them daily.  So often I get overwhelmed when I’m looking at the big picture—once I wrote down everything, even the really small things, I wanted to get done in every room in our house AND outside—O.V.E.R.W.H.E.L.M.E.D. !!!

So my current short term goal is Pip’s room.  My goal is to have it done—minus repainting her desk and building a hutch for it—by the end of January.  I still need to map out the month with the baby steps to get there, but I did one of them today without the map.

I was seeing these all over the place while I was Christmas shopping and I knew she would love to have one for her room.  However, I was NOT paying $25 for one!

Here’s how you can avoid doing that as well.  Mine was free because I already had a pillow form stored away and leftover fleece from making Pip a robe years ago (pack ratting paid off this time…)

You need:

• 12×16 pillow form
• fleece fabric
  • 1—13×17 piece for front
  • 2—13×10.5 pieces for the back
  • strips of fabric 2” wide for ruffle flower
• Stitch n Tear stabilizer (what I used)  You could probably use a light weight iron on stabilizer if you wanted instead.
• thread to match

1.  Cut out your scalloped strips of fabric for the ruffle flower.  You can cut two at once if you use the positive and negative of your cut.  I just cut a straight line to the right of the wavy cut for a second piece of ruffle.

2. With the longest straight stitch setting on your machine, stitch in a little over a 1/4 inch from the straight edge of your ruffle strips.  Then take one of the strings on the end and pull it to form the ruffle, distributing the ruffle down the stitching as you pull gently.  I go to the middle and then pull from the other side to the middle.

3.  Lay your square of stabilizer in the middle, on the back side of your 13×17 piece.  Before you stitch anything down, do a test run of your ruffles to play around with what you want the end result to be.  I decided to make my outside ruffles on the bottom looser (so I didn’t pull the string as much for those) and gradually get more ruffley as I got closer to the middle.

4.  Once you are happy, take off all but the first piece.  Lay it out, making sure it is equal distance on all sides and pin it in place–not too close to the edges you are going to stitch down (you will have 5/8” seam allowances on all edges).  My edges didn’t meet for this piece (looked like the above photo) but I didn’t get a photo of this step, sorry!

5.  Begin stitching, removing pins as you go.

6.  Starting in any blank areas you had in the last row, start filling in the center.  I hate pinning and avoid it whenever possible, but I felt I needed the pins for this project.

7.  Here’s what I had 3 rows in.

8.  For this last part, I pinned down until I started lapping the pinned area.  I left it loose until the very last part, which I hand sewed down.

9.  Hand sew this last bit down, making sure you securely knot it in the beginning and the end of the stitching.

And voila!

Rip out the stabilizer on the back if you went with Stitch n Tear.  Do it gently so you don’t rip out stitches.

10.  Now you are going to add the back pieces on.  Turn under a 1/2” on the 13” side of your 13×10.5 pieces.  Repeat with other piece.

11.  With right sides together, lay your pieces like so:

12. Pin

13.  Stich in with a 5/8” seam allowance and turn right side out.

Pip loves hers!

Linking up to:

EBTKS @ A Little Knick Knack

Make It Yourself Monday @ An Original Belle