I’m sure I have mentioned that my quilting response to stress is to haul out my scraps and play with them. A couple of years ago, as Christmas snuck up on me (as it inevitably does) I found myself staring at a pair of oblong down sofa pillows with shabby (and not in the chic way) maroon velveteen covers and gold applique.

I loved these pillows since my son was a baby — you can see one of them in the lower left of the picture above– and they were just too good to toss, so I stripped them down to pillow forms and stuffed them in a closet.

Side note: can you believe how adorable my son was? Look at that hair! He was about 1 year old in this picture.

As Christmas grew nearer, my scrap obsession boiled over and I retrieved one of my now naked 17×27 pillow forms and a pile of Christmas fabric pre-cut 2.5″ squares and I got to work. I sewed the squares together for the front of the pillow. When I made the quilting sandwich, I used blue 80’s era fabric I purchased at an estate sale as the backing, since it would never be seen.

This pillow case may have been one of the first items I attempted to quilt on my own. When the simple quilting was complete, I added an envelope enclosure for the back. Here is the finished project.

This weekend, as I assembled my Christmas decorations, I found my hand-made pillow cover and it reminded me that I have a second form that has remained bare for far too long. I decided to raid my strip scrap basket and make a coordinating cover for the other form.

Following is a picture of my very organized strip scrap  basket:

Anyway, to save time and reduce stress, I planned to be creative and use the strips instead of cutting more squares. The top came together in about an hour last night. It was a perfect meditative, calming activity.

Now I need to muster the courage to try my hand at machine quilting again.

I’m excited that I will finally have my two favorite pillows back in full use. I’ll try to get a picture of my now nearly full-grown, beard-wearing, 16-year-old son beside the pillows for future reference!