Kneeling Pillows

So, it was brought to my attention that kneeling pillows would be nice for recruitment. "April, you can sew, can you make them?" Sure, why not! And off I went! Fabric was ordered, thankfully it came in a bolt! I ordered some great industrial grade compression foam!I got the tops monogrammed, and then went to work sewing three of the 4 sides first, then stuffing the foam into the pouch, then hand stitching the last side! Yes, I just said hand stitching!

The foam was ordered from http://www.foamforyou.com. We got the 3 inch thick compression foam cut in the shape of a diamond, 8 inches by 14 inches. And we ordered 60 of them! So, here is what I did:

I put the diamond foam piece on the fabric and determined my needed extra space to sew, which was an extra 1/2 all around. I am glad I did not cut all of the fabric at this point because that was not enough! The foam did NOT give at all once stuffed in, so I lost some precious space on being able to tuck under the raw side and sew the last side by hand.  Here is the beautiful fabric!And here is the foam on it :)

 My next step was to cut all my tops and get them straight to the embroiderer for the letters to go on them! This took seemingly forever! Once I got them, I could finish cutting the bottoms. Then, I placed outside to outside and pined it together and sewed 3 edges. I tried to make the hand sewn edge an edge facing an active instead of a potential new member (recruitment talk) so the new person could not see the seam.  

My goal was to sew all sides and then stuff all foam so that only the hand stitching was left. So, I began to have stacks upon stacks of almost completed kneeling pillows! Here are some on my table!

 

Once I got the foam stuffed in as far as I could I would pulled together the last two sides for hand stitching. You can see above my open piece and then the pinned together hand sewn part. I literally sewed until my fingers bled! But, I was all worth it! Once I was done, i would make sure all sides were tucked in, as you can see below. The edge that stuck out I literally tucked into the side to make it look seamless. 

Then, I was done! The completed pillows are awesome looking and were greatly appreciated at recruitment! Check them out! I LOVE them!! And I would do them again if asked ;)

Here's to the next project! Happy Sewing!

April