Quilted Pillow & Bag (In Progress)

If you've been watching my Progress reports, you may have noticed those random pink and green blocks that have been a growing pile with no real plan? Well, this weekend I sat down determined to turn them into something other than a pile of blocks. The results were... mixed...

First up was some progress on what my initial plan was for them:

front with exterior pocket (love it)

It's going to be another quilted bag. Yeah, for the girl who only carries one purse throughout the week, I have a bag making problem.

back - a little wilder than intended... 

The exterior turned out great, almost exactly as I imagined.

Side pocket (love it again)

The interior... well... can we agree that it exists but leave it at that? I really do not want to talk about how poorly it turned out. I'm tempted to rip off the binding and remove it and start over... but that is a lot of ripping...

Assuming I don't rip it... all that's left to do is find/make/buy some straps for it. I had intended to make quilted straps from the grayish fabric, but I'm not sure if I have enough. (Also, if I do end up redoing the lining, I'll almost certainly need to use all of it and then some on the new lining.)

Then there was a secondary plan

Using a few more of these odd blocks, and some scrappy fabric I had laying around from earlier projects, I replaced one of my earliest pillow cover making experiments with a quilted pillow cover.

Yes, it wound up a little too small and got some additions to make it large enough. And yes, the pillow is absolutely sewn in there. It will require a lot of work with the seam ripper on the day I want that pillow back out of there. Which will hopefully be a day far in the future. The pillow is one of two in the house that is actually stuffed with feathers - feathers which tend to come out through all the previous covers pointy end first. I'm hoping a layer or two of batting will help reduce the number of pointy ends and improve the chances of this pillow actually getting used (even Momo won't touch it). There is not much room in my house for things that don't get used.

This is my favorite view of it, even if it was using the smallest of my strange little pinwheels. But my absolute favorite thing? It took my husband almost a week to realize it was something different. I guess the crazy look blends right in with the rest of the collection. (And yes, that's a good thing.)

Oh, and it's also gotten a lot more use now than it ever did before. I haven't felt any feathers working their way out yet, so I'm hopeful this will be a long term solution for this sad little pillow.