Pillow Party under the Tree

If you are my sister, or my SIL who is also a mother to five children AND you don't want to see what your children will be getting from me for Christmas, then make a hasty exit now please. No paging down first.

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For the rest of you: they are done! Seven quilted reading pillows for all of my nieces and nephews (yup, one of my brothers has 5 kids and my sister has 2). For specific fabric lines used, click on the photo and it will take you to flickr where I wrote that info in individual photo descriptions.

All 18" pillows except for the pink/purple dresdens in the bottom left corner, which are 20". You can see the pictures individually once you get to my flickr photostream - they're all there.

I didn't use any specific tutorials to make these pillows, but I got the idea to use my GO!Baby tumbler die for the boy pillows after seeing Katy's. Check her Tumbler Pillow tutorial at Fat Quarterly. If you want to try a dresden plate there are several free tutes I found via the google searching wonderdog here and here. Or if you want a hybrid tumbler/dresden pillow, check out this tute! For my dresdens, I used a 22.5 degree ruler made by Nifty Notions, but you can use any dresden ruler. To know how many blades you need to complete the circle, just divide 360 degrees by the number of degrees in your ruler's arc.

I like dresdens with long blades and a small centre circle (trying to use up my scraps after all), but chubby dresdens can be very cute, too. Nova just published an adorable pattern that is a chubby dresden pillow with a pocket in the centre circle. Brilliant!

On pillows for the younger kids I did a simple envelope closure for the back (plus I ran out of long zips. Note to self, an 18" pillow requires a 16" zipper, not an 18" one). I covered the couple zips I did use to protect furniture and long hair. There are different ways to cover a zipper, one is here and another here.

Next up, gifts for grown-ups.