The Pillow Project

Some time ago, I think it was probably on Easter Sunday, one of my favorite relatives commissioned me to make some pillows for him.  His parents had recently passed, and he had boxes and boxes of his father's tie collection.  He wanted me to make pillows for him to give to his siblings and nephew.

I got a slow start, and then the request came in from my cousin for the quilt and bear for her new grandbaby.  As a result it was probably November before I finished the prototype pillow.

I decided that I wanted to include as many assorted ties as I could, and that I would try not to repeat any tie twice on any pillow.  To accomplish this, I pieced the pillows in pairs so I could keep track of what I had added to each.  For the initial pillows, I had to deconstruct ties as I went, so about 40 ties to make that first pillow.  After the first pair, I added 10 new ties to the mix, so that each pair had some ties that were different, plus a subset that were the same.

I cut strips from the deconstructed ties, and pieced them onto a muslin foundation, which I had cut to about 10 inches square.  Once I had the 4 squares for each pillow pieced, I trimmed them to 9.75 inches square for a finished pillow size of 18 inches.

I used blue wool suiting fabric found at the Goodville PA Fabric Outlet as the backing, and to cover the cording.  The backs close with nice blue coat type buttons.  I embroidered some labels, and those are hidden under the button placket.

This is a care label, the other labels included the personal information for the family , so I won't share it here.

Here's the whole collection:

I am super happy with how they turned out!