A New Throne for Duchess

My wonderful, adorable dog Duchess has been using an old, worn, ripped hand me down dog pillow since I brought her home two years ago.  So, I figured it was time for a new pillow.  Something bright, fun and colorful. 

Adorable pink fabric with black and white poodles, trimmed with black and white hounds tooth covered rope and lime green sides.  I used home decor weight fabric since she easily rips through cotton.  Also, I was able to use the filler from her old pillow.  So, essentially this was a $0 cost project since I already had all the fabric and the rope.  Yeah!

Usually when I try to take her picture, she tries to smell the camera and I can never get a good shot.  But, she must have been feeling proud of her new pillow this day.  I couldn't have asked for better poses.  She gave me at least 10 different photos...I am gonna take that as a "Thanks for my new pillow!" from her.

Here are my two favorites:

Doesn't she look right at home on that new pillow?

The Ruffled Rose Petal Pillow Tutorial

I knew when I recovered my chair, I wanted to make a cute, fun and flirty pillow to decorate it.  It seems like everywhere I look, there are ruffles, ruffles and more ruffles.  And who doesn't love ruffles? 

So, I decided to make a Ruffled Rose Petal Pillow...

...and now you can too!!

Materials Needed:

White cotton fabric for pillow form (amount depends on size of pillow you want)

2 yards white (or whatever color you want the flower to be) jersey knit

Batting to stuff the pillow

Thread

Step 1:  We start out by making the pillow behind the rose petals.  Determine how large you want your pillow to be and cut two circles.  I decided to go big, so my circles are 18 inches diameter.

Step 2:  Now it's time to make some ruffles.  Cut jersey knit into 3 inch strips.  I used my serger  and serged the outer edge with a mixture of threads in blue, light blue and gray.  If you don't have a serger you could use a decorative stitch or leave it untouched.

Next you want to ruffle the opposite edge of the jersey knit strips than the one you just serged.  My serger has a built in ruffler, so I used that.  If you don't have a ruffler foot to attach to your machine, you can hand ruffle the strips as you stitch it on to the pillow.  Also, if you don't have a ruffler foot....get one!  They are amazing!!

Step 3:  Time to create a rose!  Now that we have all the ruffle we need, it's time to stitch it on the pillow.  Starting from the outer edge of one of your circles you cut out in step 1, pin the ruffle all the way around until the entire edge is covered and stitch in place.  Without cutting the ruffle, pin another circle between 1/2 inch to an inch in from the outside ruffle.  It isn't necessary to be exact here...I just estimated as I went. 

Continue stitching each circular row down, one at a time. This can become a little time consuming, but it's worth taking the extra time to pin one row at a time. 

Eventually you end up at the center.  I folded in a few extra inches of my ruffle to give the center some fullness.

Step 4:  Put the pillow together!  Now that you have created your rose, you want to create your pillow.  With right sides together, stitch the other circle to your rose petal.  Leave a small opening so you can flip the pillow right side out and stuff it. 

Step 5:  Flip the pillow right side out and stuff with batting to desired fullness.  Hand stitch the opening closed.

Viola!!  You now have a fun and flirty ruffled rose petal pillow!