Dahlia Pillow

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.

pillow form

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?) 

Pin well, sew around patterns

 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. 

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.

One petal turned

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.

First row & start of second

Third row

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.

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.

I added a pompom center.

It looks great on my sofa!

I hope you love your Dahlia pillow as much as I love mine!