Made: Pillow Mattress

I recently discovered Pinterest and was quickly hooked. I now have boards full of tons of ideas that will likely never materialize. I try to only pin things I feel might fall with in my skill set and budget, but extra time and energy are in short supply.

Gladly, there are exceptions.

My missionary MIL, Anna, is home on furlough, and she is a sewing whiz. Nearly every time she's home, she generously offers to help me with a project. This time I knew JUST the thing.

I saw this link on Pinterest a couple of weeks ago and thought, "I can do that!"
Ahem. Good thing I decided to let my MIL help me tackle this. We managed to complete this pillow mat, with our combined experience, in approximately 3 hours. Maybe Anna was just being kind- she probably could've done it faster w/o my "help", or maybe we were both too exacting, but unless you have all the measurements all worked out, 45min seems like a shockingly small amount of time to complete this project. Still, the instructions are really quite helpful. We read through the instructions before we got started and perused the comments for any addition hits or tips we might glean.

I bought 5 standard pillows for a grand total of $15 @ Big Lots (the nearest Ikea is nearly 2 hrs away, and, sadly, I have never been there). I chose a mint green flat sheet from my "linen closet" (a laughable term for the perilous stacks of sheets, etc. on the crooked shelves in the closet beneath the stairs). The full-size sheet was a bit bigger than what we needed, but provided enough material to include 5 pillows (vs. 4, used in the tutorial) and made the mat long enough to -just barely- fit my 6'1" frame.

We started by laying out the pillows to ensure they would fit. Then we folded down the amount of material we wanted to use as the pocket that would cover the pillow on the open end. The pocket concept got a pit confusing, but we conquered it.
We spent some time puzzling over how to make sure the sections would fit the pillow snugly, without being too small. This was acheived by measuring the full circumfrences of a pillow's width and length and dividing it by half. Each casement was 17" wide and 24" long (with an additional 1" for the hem and an additional 8" for the pockets).

We measured and pinned the pockets down and I sewed them up. We tested our measurement by sticking the end of a pillow in the first pocket. Reassured that this was the correct measurement, I completed sewing the other pockets.

We then measured out the length of the casement, pinned each in place and sewed those down. Viola! Finisimo.
{And now, you are glad I didn't write the tutorial. ;) }
 Maybe it sounds easy, but the journey was somewhat like swimming upstream, Yosie being the primary current. She played quietly with her doll nearby for the first 30 minutes.

I didn't mind including her in sewing activities either, though it made me a little tense- one jumpy move from her and the risk that someone would get pinned or sewed was imminent.

Pressing the reverse button, when given the okay.

For a 4 yr old, she did quite well and was very enthusiastic. But, after another 40 min or so, her ability to patiently follow instructions started to wane, as did my ability to patiently repeat instructions. The lull of time between when she could help and when she couldn't, made her antsy and clingy. Eventually, she was escorted to the playroom, given musical accompaniment and advised she would be released when we were done. 

Removing pins (machine stopped) as I came upon them.



Another time hang-up came from reintroduction to a fine-n-dandy sewing machine that sits, encased, in a corner of my living room, and rarely sees the light of day. It's not pretty, like the mint green lovely that only sews a straight stitch and is perched in the craft cubby on my back porch. But it does have versatility and history. It sews a zigzag stitches, invisible hem stitches and a simple serge stitch. It was one of Anna's first sewing machines bought new. Some parts are reinforced with duct tape. It's still quite competent. I needed a refresher course in it's functions. And the bobbin had to be rethreaded.

Still, perhaps contrary to popular belief, it's is not impossible to swim upstream. Anticipation of the finish product motivated me the end. I was not disappointed!

Yosie was ecstatic too. She thrashed about on the mat, giggling and squealing with glee for nearly 10 minutes. I tried it out myself- it IS quite comfy! This will be great for a variety of potential purposes- nap mat, sleepover bed for a little friend/cousin, or middle-of-a-stormy-night bed in Mama and Daddy's room.

Now that I have experience with the basic measurements and approach I'm considering making another one. Can't help patting myself (and Anna) on the back a little for making this" Bed in a Bag " for $15 vs. $148.79. Mine's not in a bag though. We tied it up with a pink grosgrain ribbon.

Again, wanna give fair credit to the very helpful tutorial at http://southerndisposition.blogspot.com/2011/06/pillow-bed-tutorial.html.

And THAT, friends,
is what I accomplished
on Tuesday.

Not dishes. Not vacuuming. Not dinner making.
Just good, old-fashioned creating.