Not so Yo-Yo Pillow!

A week or so ago I guest posted over at Sugar Bee's Craft Edition, and this was what I offered  up to her many fans. :) I figured I'd share with you guys too. :) You'll have to forgive the picture quality as when hubs when to New Orleans he absconded with the camera. So I had to make do with the cell phone. :)

I have wanted/needed to make new pillows for my family room for a while. I was able to mend two of my pillows, but the other two pillows have succumbed to the many hours of fort building and just general boy-dom.  So I started throwing ideas around for what I wanted for my new pillows, and here's what I came up with. The O-Ring Pillow, yea I'm not going with that name anymore. I used to be a car gal, so there's my nod to that. :) 

 So that's what we're making today, and in theory it is super simple....however, the execution...well lets hope you've got some time to kill, but I think this beauty is worth it, don't you? 

What you'll need:

5/8 yard of backing fabric - can be anything, muslin, denim, canvas, or twill as long as its at least mid-weight

Varying strips of fabric

Patience

What we're gonna do:

Cut out two 19" squares out of your backer fabric. 

Take your strips and run a gathering stitch down one side. If your fabric is unraveling or just getting on your nerves, you may want to run it through a serger. I wish I had done this. 

Gather up the one side of your strip and when it can curl back on itself in a complete circle (shown above), mark the spot with your finger, then line up your cut edges and cut the strip as shown below. 

Take a 1/4" to 1/8" seam down the two raw edges. Tie off your gathering stitches so that you don't lose your gathers. I usually just quickly knot all of my gathering threads together. It holds just fine as long as you're not too rough with it. Press your circles. I used a cotton with steam setting even for the polyester and silk remnants I had. If you're quick about it, you're not going to damage the fabric. Be sure to iron in the wrinkles. :) 

Start laying out your circles on your backer fabric. You really can't go wrong  here, just play around until you find something you like, then pin in place.

Now to attach the circles we're going to use a satin stitch. I set my satin (or zig-zag) stitch to 7.0 wide and .3 in length. You'll have to play around with your machine to see what you like. Oh and I also had my tension at 3. 

Now go around the edge and centers of all your circles. Go slow and take your time. You'll notice in this picture why I mentioned serging the edges of your fabric. That orange fabric was driving me nuts! Your backer fabric will pucker a bit, but it will even out with the stuffing inside it. 

After doing all the satin stitches on your circles, just sew up your pillow as normal, stuff and enjoy. Easy peasy, Nice and easy. :) 

I hope you guys enjoyed this little tutorial, and you know this O-Ring look would look good on any multitude of things. Table Runners, Place mats, Towels....oh the things we could add these things too :) 

Thank you all for having me, and have a wonderful day!