Pleated Pillow Goodness

Brilliant!!!  It's always fun to try out new crafty things.  It's always better when they turn out perfectly after the first try, but in this case it took me at least 3 tries...and it's still not perfect, but cute anyway so I'm going to call it done.  I've convinced myself that multiple attempts are okay because as it turns out I think I'm going to be on a pleat and fabric manipulation kick, so I might as well take my time and learn as I go.

I am a member of the Modern Quilt Guild (my husband thinks it's pretty sweet that I'm a Guild member.  I mean, he is a former D & D nerd so it's understandable that my guild status would be a real thrill for him...now if only I could turn into an Elven warrior-maiden who throws fire darts and wears a leather vest...getting off subject...) and we just had our first meeting a month ago and we decided to do a pillow swap using at least one solid fabric along with a patterned fabric and as I am a fan of yellow, I knew I had to do something with my favorite color....to be honest it's only my favorite color right  now.  It changes on a regular basis. 

I really like the combination of grey, white and yellow and so that color scheme in my head was my starting point for fabric selection.  I found my print, a white and black modern floral.  Found a yellow I really liked and then used the grey and black that I already owned. 

Finding the exact side measurements was a bit tricky considering the stretch the pleats gave, but after stretching both sides, I found a good measurement.

All borders added.  I gave the yellow a funky twist by pushing the horizontal ends out, you don't notice it too much on the final product, but it was an experiment.

I chose to do a pocket back, but I wanted to give it a decorative border...you know, to be flashy...but well...let's just say I had to find my seam-ripper as the order in my head was backwards.  So if this is what your pocket back looks like when it's inside-out...then you've done it wrong.  Because when you turn it right-side out...

Where is the decorative border?...I sewed it as the underneath flap on accident instead of the top flap.  You see, it's right-sides together and in my head...well, I got mixed up.  Easy enough to do.

Peek-a-boo.

It's lucky I didn't have to completely unpick the entire back as to make the pocket-back you have two equally sized pieces of fabric that over lap in the middle.  You take the size of your pillow front, which in my case was 18.5 inches and divide in half which gives us 9.25 inches and then you add 2.5 to each piece.  So you have two pieces of fabric that are 18.5 inches wide and 11.75 inches in length.  They overlap in the middle, so I really only had to unpick the a bit of each side so that I could re-arrange how I was overlapping...

I might just have to keep it. 

Cute backside.