Monday, August 15, 2011

A Gum Drop Pillow

A few weeks ago I stopped at a new-to-me quilt shop for some thread, and found a few Gum Drop Pillows made up. I picked up this pattern for a dollar when a lqs was closing a few years ago, but never saw the pillows in real life. Well, after one look at them, I was full of ideas for fabric combinations!
We could use some sort of ottoman/extra seating in our living room, and I thought one of these would be fun in some Summersault. First I wanted to make a prototype, so I pulled out my Castle Peeps stash and sewing up this fun pillow for Addy!
I found the pattern really easy to work with, though I did make 1 small alteration. I added a zipper in one of the seams, which is really handy for stuffing the pillow...and restuffing if it flattens a bit! I also thought I could pull the stuffing out and wash the cover if need be.
I'm hoping to start on the pillow for the living room soon, but first I'm going to research my stuffing options. Fiberfil is not dense enough for the pillow to be used as a seat or a footrest, yet the bean bag chair filler is really pricey!
A bonus to the pattern: if you don't stuff it full, it makes a great bean bag chair! My dog enjoyed the half-stuffed pillow for several days before I had a chance to buy more fiberfil. I'm thinking about making the dogs their own pillow out of a laminate. Easy wipe down and dog hair won't stick to it!

Editing to add: I hated how the poly-fil made the pillow lumpy with use, so I made a liner for the pillow and filled the liner with styrofoam bean bag filler. The pillow is much more comfy and visually appealing now! (I used a liner so that if the pillow outer happens to come unzipped, I won't have a mess of tiny styrofoam balls all over my house!)

5 comments:

Anna said...

love this! I made Natalie a rollie pollie (from MADE's pattern) and she loves it, but our dog loves it MORE! try cluster stuff, it's pretty lovely.

Natalie said...

What a fun pillow! I love this shape, and it looks great with the castle peeps!

CREATIVE DISORGANIZATION said...

Very nice Nikki...I notice that it matches the little house you made...You could try a rubber shop...we have Clark Rubber here...has all different types of foam sizes & thicknesses....you could get a block of foam and shape it with an electric kitchen knife!!! I go for the scraps...they are cheaper and you can also glue them together...They also come in different dencities...good luck

Elena said...

My girlfriend has one of those leather Moroccan poufs from Serena & Lily. I unzipped it to discover layers and layers of what looked like quilt batting. Maybe make batting scraps your base and then put stuffing around it for a more puffy, uniform look.
Good luck! Let me know what you figure out, b/c I'm dying to make one of these!

Diane said...

Hi, I am planning to make an ottomon and was wondering how much bean bag filler you used. I want to stuff it full.

Thanks

Diane