Pinterest-a-thon: Ruffled Pillow

Today is my second guest post this week written by Jen! Jen is a Meeting Planner and has been the primary person to train me in my new role. I shadowed her the entire week at the conference and we traveled together to Boston, Miami and Tampa for site visits. I feel so lucky to be learning from her, as she is amazing at her job. In addition to all the work and travel time we've spent together she also includes me in social activities. In short: she rocks and I'm grateful! Thank you for sharing your project, Jen!

Having totally fallen in love with the diy ruffled pillow I knew it was exactly what I wanted to create when I was challenged to actually follow up on a pin and create something myself! Since the original pin only included a series of pictures for instructions I hit the web to find some additional instructions and landed on ruffle pillow {by Jess} from Floral Showers. I combined the two with my ultimate vision and created exactly what I wanted.

The tutorial suggested using an extra large t-shirt and stuffing, instead I purchased one yard of beautiful blue/gray striped taffeta and two 16” x 16” pillow forms.

Step 1: Slice that fabric

Taffeta has a tendency to fray, and since I was concerned with the inside seams of the pillow falling apart I decided that I would sew French seams for all my interior seams. Since French seams would need more seam allowance I cut the front of my pillow at 17” x 17” and wanting the back of the pillow to be an envelope, I cut two back pieces that would overlap, 12” x 17” and 9” x 17”. My rotary cutter made it extremely easy to slice nine 1.75” x 25” strips which would become the ruffles. The ruffle strips need to be cut considerably longer than the final pillow size as they will become shorter once ruffled.

Step 2: Sew those ruffles

To create the ruffles I sewed a basting stitch (long stitch) down the center of each strip. I then laid each strip on the pillow front and tacked them down by sewing ¼” seam through the top of each strip.

Begin to ruffle!

This was the best part of the project! To create the ruffles I simply pulled the bobbin thread causing the strips to scrunch up until they were 17” long (be sure to hold the threads at the opposite end from where your pulling and don’t pull too hard). I then went back to the sewing machine and sewed each of the strips down their center onto the front of the pillow. If your original basting seam is showing you can easily pull the threads out, making the pillow top look cleaner.

To complete my ruffle pillow I laid the two back pieces of the pillow so that they overlapped (to create the envelope) and then laid the ruffled top on top of them so that the wrong sides of the fabric were against each other. I then sewed the front to the back around the perimeter using ¼” seam allowance, be sure not to sew the ruffles down (Part 1 of the French seam). I then turned the pillow inside out and again sewed around the perimeter of the pillow using ¼” seam allowance (Part 2 of the French seam). Once again I turned the pillow right side out and I had a ruffled pillow cover! To finish I just put the pillow forms into the pillow cover using the envelope opening in the back.

front - ruffles!

back - envelope

Hardest part of the entire project was dealing with my
poorly trained cat that not only continually jumped on the
table, but also attacked fabric as it came out the backside of
the sewing machine. Good thing she's cute!