Well this was a week of this and that.  Lots of sewing on various small projects from embroidering a new set of sheets and making a few facial masks for the Etsy shop, as well as an infinity square pillow from linen toweling.  I have had Infinity square pillows made before for a couple of my clients but had never tried one myself.  Here is how it went down.

You used to buy toweling by the yard.  I remember my mom doing this when I was a kid.  It comes 18″ wide and however long you want it.  Then you would cut to dish towel size and hem it either by hand or machine.  When I found this toweling at fabric-store.com I knew I had to order 3 yards to test it out.  I always order 3 yds of almost any material or ribbon.  When I took it out of the package it was as I expected rough and course.  I put it in the washing machine in hot water and then dried it and it came out full of great nubby texture and much softer.  The fabric-store.com recommends pre-shrinking all of their linen. It has a 7% shrinkage rate, which is perfectly normal for linen.  Once dry I ironed it on the hottest setting then the learning curve began.

To do this technique you must start with a square piece of material.  

After shrinkage my toweling ended up about 17 1/2″ across so I cut it 17 1/2″ long with my rotary cutter.

Cut the material corner to corner on the diagonal, and cut it on the diagonal again.  If you have an uneven stripe which my material was you will have to repeat these steps again with another 17.5″ square of material.  You will now have 8 triangles.

You will need 2 triangles with the large stripe from one square of material and 2 triangles with the large stripe from the other square of material.  Lay out your four triangles to create your infinity square.

Pin together your triangles making sure you match up all your stripes.  You have to make sure that your stripes match to insure success with this effect, if you have to do a little trimming to even up your triangles that’s ok.  In this case pins are your best friends.  Because this fabric is now cut on the bias it is very stretchy.  Sew each set together. 

 Press seams open top stitch with a triple thread stitch very close to seam edge.  Repeat with other two Triangles.  

Now you’re ready to sew the 2 sections together.  Follow same procedure as above.  Press seams open with a hot iron and flip over and see the cool pillow front you’ve created. 

 I chose not to cut the selvages, 

I liked the organic look they created.

So now came the problem solving.  I was making these pillows for a window seat and I needed them to be 24″ square.  I had a piece of course raw linen that I was going to use to make the 24″ pillows.  The problem was the selvages blended right into the linen so I needed something to break up the two pieces.  After cutting everything out of my 3 yards of material I had just enough left over to create a flange with the orange stripes. 

 I cut as many 1 1/2″ strips as I could get out of what was left.  Sewed them all together,I folded and pressed on the orange stripe and sewed to under my selvage creating a flange (banding) around the pillow.

Then I pinned and topstitched the toweling to the 25″ square piece of linen (accommodating for seam allowances) making sure the now 18″ square was centered on the 25″ square.

For the back of the pillow I always add hidden zippers.  I don’t put them in the seam because I find the seams are much nicer without the bulk of the zipper.  I cut the back of the pillow 25×22 to accommodate the zipper.  I then cut off 4″ from that piece of material and inserted the hidden zipper.

Right sides together with 1/2″ seam allowance stitch your pillow together.  Note be sure to open your zipper enough to get your hand in there for turning and pin, pin, pin!  Clip corners.

Turn right side out and use a bone folder to get sharp points on your corners.  Press with hot iron.  Top stitch with a triple stitch around the perimeter of the pillow 1/2″ in from seam to create another flange to finish your pillow.

That’s it your done!  I added a 26×26″ feather/down pillow form for my 24″ square pillow.  I find up-sizing on the pillow form makes for a nicer more robust pillow.  I always use feather/down forms, never fiberfill.

I love making pillows do you? Let’s see a recent project.

Thanks for stopping

Shelley