Playdate: Drunken Circles Pillow (and a Challenge)

By Thomas Knauer, Thomas Knauer Sews

Everyone has scraps; it’s one of the many hazards of our fabric habit. I have to believe that my current scrap stash is verging on legendary proportions, thanks to my recent No-Repeat Scrap Vomit quilt project. What started out as a wish-list project quickly became a reality when 100+ quilters around the world sent me more than 5,000 2.5″ squares and scraps of assorted sizes. (You can read more about this cool project on my blog.)

Now I didn’t want to be wasteful with those scraps, so I cut out as many squares as I could from each of them, and of course I received quite a few multiples in all those envelopes and packages. So, all these orphan squares need to find a home, which got me thinking, and thinking usually leads me to pillows. (I love pillows!!!)

Armed with a few handfuls of squares, I went up to the studio and started working, which usually means staring out the window and thinking. More thinking. More thinking. Idea. What could be more natural for a lot of 2.5″ squares than circles, right? Exactly. Time for the sewing machine.

I am normally a planner, but my quick sketch just felt lifeless to me (and by sketch I mean 10 minutes in Illustrator).

 

Time for another natural fit. How about I hand-draw my circles? (Trust me, that’s almost as natural a fit as using lots of 2.5″ squares to make circles.) Hence the Drunken Circles pillow:

I love the the negative space play created by my inability to draw a decent circle. (So much of my life as an artist has been based on taking advantage of my own ineptitude.) Personally I like to think of these circles as having Cézanne edges.

So, here’s what you’ll need.

1/2 yard of neutral linen/cotton blend.
44 blue 2.5″ squares
28 red 2.5″ squares
4 yellow 2.5″ squares

 

Step One: Cut out a 16.5″ square. This is the bottom piece of the top; you will be appliqueing all the circles to this.

Step Two: Piece together all of your blue squares like this:

Step Three: Sketch a circle onto the pieced-together blue squares. Don’t worry about being too precise, but make sure you get all the way to the edges. You want your circle-oid to be 16″ in diameter. Fold over the edges of the circle and top stitch it to the backing piece of linen.

Step Four: Cut a 14″ circle (roughly drawn) out of your neutral linen/cotton. Turn the edges and top stitch it in the center of the blue circle.

Step Five: Piece together all of your red squares like this:

 

 

Step Six: Sketch a circle onto the pieced-together red squares; just like with your blue squares. This circle should end up 10″ in diameter. Turn the edges and top stitch to the center of the linen/cotton circle.

Step Seven: Cut a 7″ circle (again roughly drawn) out of your cotton/linen. Turn the edges and top stitch it to the center of the red circle.

Step Eight: Piece together your 4 yellow squares and cut a 4″ circle out of it. Turn the edges and top stitch it to the center of the linen/cotton circle.

Step Nine: Use your favorite pillow enclosure method to complete the pillow. I love using a simple envelope slipcover method.

(Editors’ Note: Here are shortcuts to three tutorials on this pillow cover technique:
Freshly Picked Pillow Tutorial: Envelope Back
Cluck Cluck Sew Tutorial: Scrap Buster Fall Pillow 
Apartment Therapy: How To Sew An Envelope Back Pillow.)

Voila!!! You’re done. Best thing about Drunken Circles is that it is almost impossible to mess up. It is a totally low-key pillow that just gets better when you send your inner perfectionist off for a cup of tea.

 

And now for the Challenge

Would you like a chance to follow Thomas’ lead and wallow around in scraps, with the only directive being that you use a certain number of different pieces to create something wonderful? (What’s that you say…you do this every day?)

Then play along in the Scrap Splat Challenge, some joint fun-and-games that Generation Q is holding in collaboration with Thomas Knauer, and let’s see what amazing-ness will emerge!

Scrap Splat will work like this:

• This is a limited challenge. Only 30 people can play along.
• Sign up by Sept. 28 to be eligible to participate by commenting at the end of this blog post. (Just say “I wanna play!” or something like that. And make nice with Thomas because if you’re chosen, he’ll be sending you bits of fabric.) Make sure your comment has a valid e-mail addy attached.
• No blog-post stuffing, either. Multiple comments will be disregarded. (While we admire the deviousness of that approach, one comment is all it really takes to get in the game.)
• Then, on Sept. 29, we’ll randomly choose 30 lucky guys or gals to be in the challenge. Thomas will contact the chosen participants for mailing addresses and then mail each person an envelope of 40 different scraps cut into 2 ½” squares.
• Then, YOU create a sewn project using at least 30 of the 40 scraps. (Honor system here; we won’t count.) It can be anything…quilt, pillow, accessory, garment, dog leash, whatever.
• Feel free to use one or more other solid fabrics.
• Images of your SS Challenge entry are due by October 12. As this date approaches, we’ll share more details about where to send your images. And don’t worry your quilty little heads about who’s doing the judging and what the prizes might be. All will be revealed. Your only job is to cook up some fabulous scrappyness.
• We’ll eventually choose the Top 5 Scrap Splat projects and share them with the GenQ community on October 24, along with mini-profiles of each Scrap Splattin’ stitcher.
• Submissions will be reviewed for their ingenuity, playfulness, originality and overall scrappy appeal. 

So, if you can’t resist a challenge (plus free scraps), sign up to be eligible for participating in the Scrap Splat! You know you want to.