The living room pillow completed

There were many, many steps to create this single pillow. Last fall a friend in my sewing group taught a class on how to sew these "tuck squares." We did additional classes and finally I had 9 partially finished squares. The next step was to hand sew the finishing touches. But then what? What to do with the squares?  Make a pillow naturally. I located a 20X20 inch pillow form, came up with a scheme to border the 9 squares in the same batik fabric. OK, now I had a pillow front the right size. Did I go ahead and make the pillow? No, I determined this was the perfect time to practice/learn hand quilting. What do you do if you don't have any batting for this purpose?  Ask a departing friend if she has any batting remnants she was just going to toss out. Done. It was easy to find a scrap fabric for the underside of the quilted back. Now to borrow a quilting needle. Done. Get some helpful hints from my friends and start in on it. I did machine quilt around the 9 squares but I stippled the border(hand quilted in squiggly lines). Now that the front was "done, what should I do about the back of the pillow? The same batik fabric, but it couldn't just be plain batik fabric. A friend suggested I echo ( with hand quilting) one of the tuck squares in the center. It sounded like a good idea so I did that and then I also quilted outside the center "square."

Once the pillow was the definite plan, I'd located a zipper and cording and fabric to cover the cording to create piping. I thought at this point I was all set to finally sew my pillow together. But no, I did not have a proper piping foot and the zipper foot was unlike what I used to have. Hmmm. Would I have to omit the piping after all? There was another way. I handstitched the zipper and piping and and finished the pillow by hand. Our Idul Fitri weekend was pretty quiet so I spent a LOT of time on this pillow. As a final step, after careful consideration, several buttons were added and the pillow was finally done. It was really difficult to capture all of the texture in a photo so we invite all of you to come and see the pillow in person. Anytime...