I
saw a cool pillow on Pinterest one day.
It had a flower on it that reminded me of a Dahlia, very pretty. It was, however, a square pillow and it
seemed to me that it would look better as a round pillow.
I
haven’t blogged in a while (no reason really) so I decided to post a tutorial
on making a round Dahlia pillow.
I
happen to have many pieces of fleece, including one in the color which I was
hoping to make my pillow, so I made my pillow out of fleece. I think it worked very well so I could
suggest that yours might also be out of fleece, but it doesn’t need to be. You would want it to be of a fabric that
isn’t going to fray though, Perhaps
a knit would work. I’d bet it would look
nice in a satiny fabric too, but there you would have your fraying factor so
maybe not.
I
chose out two colors of the fleece, in varying shades of maroon.
Of
the darker of the two, I cut two circles, about sixteen inches across.
I’m going to tell you the EASY way to do this, not the way that I did
it. You’ll want to sew your petals onto one
circle before sewing them together and then stuffing it. I had to sew it all by hand which was not
easy without a curved needle. You,
however, should be able to do this on your machine, making it much easier and
quicker. Of course, the pictures that I
have show the rows going onto a stuffed pillow.
This should help you to visualize how cool it’s going to look in the
end. If you want to do it the way that I
did, go for it. It was a nice project to
do while watching tv at night.
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| pillow form |
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I
did all kinds of crazy math with a tape measure and a paper and pencil, trying
to figure out what size to cut my petals but ended up deciding that since I was
going to gather the petals, I could make them any size I wanted and I really
wanted to make them four and a half inches across! Now, don’t go cutting out a million 4.5”
flower petals just yet! I measured round
the edge and came up with somewhere around 40” so I thought that would be about
ten petals around. It ended up being
19! I used the wrapper from a JoAnn’s
fabric remnant to make a pattern for my flower petals. (that’s 3” across for those who don’t have
JoAnn’s remnants lying around all over) It was a wonderful width and I could
get several petals from one wrapper. I
later used a Big Lots receipt which worked just as well, if not better. I would suggest you find a cup that’s about
4” across and trace that onto your paper for the top curve, leaving the bottom
flat. Lay your two colors one on top of
the other and Pin your 4” arc patterns on in a row from selvage to selvage
leaving ½” between them. (You were wondering where I’d lost my half inch. Weren’t you?)
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| Pin well, sew around patterns |
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Use at least two pins, maybe even three so it
stays put while you sew around the curved edge of the pattern, leaving the flat
side open. At first, I was cutting them
apart and pinning and sewing them onto the pillow separately. WAS I CRAZY?
(okay – best we don’t get into
that right now) Sew around your patterns, back tracking at the start and finish
(forward and back a bit) to keep the ends from coming undone when turned. If you run out of patterns, you can always
sneak the first few off and use them again.
Once you have a whole row sewn, cut them out, leaving a quarter inch
seam allowance or so on each one. Don’t
cut them completely apart though! Leave
about a quarter inch uncut down by the flat side.
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| Don't cut all the way through. |
You would think that it would make it hard to
turn them and they’d make a mess of things, but it actually made it easier to
put them on the pillow! Toward the end,
I wasn’t really even pinning them anymore!
But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Sorry.
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| One petal turned |
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| One petal pinned |
Once
I had them sewed and cut out, I kind of pleated or gathered each flat side and
pinned it with two pins. I took about
five hand stitches across the bottom of each petal. Pinning them in a circle around the outer
edge (at least two inches in from the edge of course) and sewing them by machine should be so much
easier. I’m so jealous of you! Once I had finished the first row, I wanted
my petals to be a bit smaller so I took all of my patterns and trimmed them to
be about a quarter to a half of an inch smaller. They were all still the same size as each
other and I still placed them on the fabric a half of an inch apart so that
they would have their seam allowance.
Now, however, the bottoms were not flat, but with random points. They really don’t matter so I didn’t bother
to chop them off. The next row of petals
covers them. Pin your second row about
one and a half inches in from the last row, covering the flat ends.
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| First row & start of second |
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| Third row |
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| Keep adding petals |
Sew,
trim, turn, pin, sew to pillow. Sew,
trim, turn, pin, sew to pillow as many times as it takes to fill your pillow
top.
My
rows had 19 petals, 20 petals, (WHAT?) 13 petals, 9 petals and 5 petals.The center of the flower looked a little funky so I made a center pom pom sort of thing by wrapping two strips of fleece together in a jelly roll and snipping it every quarter inch or so. I like it better now.
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| Add petals till there's no more room! |
Sew
around the two circles, leaving about three inches open to turn it right side
out. This step may be more difficult for
you, since you have to pin the petals back so you avoid catching them in your
seam. Turning it with all of those pins
in there may be challenging as well so maybe you should use safety pins for this
step! I stuffed it with polyester fiber filler, not overly firm. Now, turn and
pin and sew the opening closed.
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| I added a pompom center. |
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| It looks great on my sofa! |
I
hope you love your Dahlia pillow as much as I love mine!
