Pillows are done - ALMOST

So I set a goal of getting all of the pillows made by Christmas. And I made that goal - almost. I had made the one pillow earlier so my client would have time to ship it to her brother. That left 5 more pillows to make. Really, only 3 of them needed to be by Christmas morning, as one of the pillows was for the client and one for the daughter who had helped her plan the project.

Anyway, I was able to get all 5 pillows pieced, stitched, and turned by the 23rd. I stuffed 4 of them and stitched them shut. Then, oh then, the unthinkable happened. I notice a small tear in the bottom of one of the ties on the 5th pillow. A small tear with big consequences, as it was the result of pressure of the stuffing on silk that had degraded with time and staining.

Because the tear was at the bottom, at first I thought I could enclose the tiny tear within a new bottom seam line. But when my sister came over that evening to offer her advice (she's an expert with old fabrics) she tells me that the entire tie is bad. If I try to keep it in there, it will continue to tear. So now I have to take apart the pillow and replace the one stripe.

Not so bad except that all the stripes are pieced on to a muslin foundation (for added stability). Oh, and the side seams of the pillows? All reinforced for extra strength and extra trouble to rip out.

Luckily, the pillow that was damaged was the one meant for my client personally, which meant that the Christmas deadline was flexible. I devised a plan to rework the pillow, which I'll post about tomorrow, and called the woman to set up a time to deliver the 4 that were complete.

Before I handed the pillows over, I took pictures of each of them so I could share them. I worked hard on these and I'm darn tootin' proud.

This is a pillow made from the same set of ties as the first one I made. (I took photos of the piecing on the front and the back.)

This one was made for the client's mother. The difficulty on this one was using all these ties with very strong diagonal stripes. I couldn't put them next to each other because it was just too much on the eye, but I only had one tie that would go in between - and much of it was damaged.

This is the one for the client's daughter. Her house is decorated in more muted, beachy tones so we chose grayish, bluish ties for her pillow.

Finally, this is one that was made for the client's sister.

This afternoon I got the final pillow fixed. Tomorrow morning I'll stuff it, photo it, and post it out here. Then this project will be done done done done done.

Toodles,