Gathered Welt Pillow

This is what I've been up to lately.  I happened to find this luscious dragonfly embroidered silk at JoAnn's recently.  It goes perfectly with my current project.

These are some of the fabrics and the color palette that I'm using with my current client.   The stripe and solid navy will be window treatments.  The check may end up as a table runner.  We'll see.  This post will give you a quick how-to on making gathered welting.  I wanted basic pillows with just a little something extra.

 Materials needed:

• fabric - about 1 1/4 yd. for one pillow
• extra-thick welting
• zipper
• pillow insert

To make a pillow with gathered welting, first cut two 19"-squares for the pillow form (using an 18-20" insert).  Next, cut two strips of fabric 2 3/4"* W x the length of the fabric, about 54", and sew them end-to-end.  Use extra wide welting, cut to fit all the way around your pillow.   Sew it into your long strip using your zipper foot.  Wrong sides together.  *You may have to adjust this width depending on the thickness of your fabric.

Oops, it was too snug to gather properly.  Make sure you don't sew too closely to the welting, or this will happen to you.  I had to use the seam ripper to get at the welting and add a safety pin to get it through the strip.  Luckily, there was masking tape at the end already from when it was cut, so the pin stayed put.

Pull the fabric through your sewn tube using the safety pin, so it fits onto the welting, pushing the fabric so it gathers on your welting.

Here it is, your gathered welting.  (That silk frays a lot!)  From here on in it's pretty basic.

Pin the gathered welting around the right side of one of your pillow squares, baste.  Next sew your zipper in.  Complete by sewing the three remaining sides and stuff your pillow insert in and zip.

How yummy.  Here it is shown with a basic blue pillow.  The pillows (two of each) are going to go somewhere like this:

brown project by cheapchickim on Polyvore.com

Here's a better view.  Swoon over the embroidery.  Hmmm, the photo's pretty good, too!

This is the fringe from the above photo.  I'm making a lumbar pillow for the red chair using the same diamond navy fabric (I think) and fancy-ing it up with the fringe.  Plus, my blog homework for the last two photos (GO ME!  You know how I loves me some great photo tips) is, I gave it a try using Miss Funky Junk's example.  AND, another blogger from Bender Oaks Gifts steered me to her blog where she gives tips on using a point and shoot camera for macro photos with examples and everything.  Check it out.  Thanks, Donna and Omi!


I'm hangin' with these ladies: