How to make the big fat flower pillow

Welcome to Transformation Thursday! It’s the one day of the week we all get together to celebrate getting stuff done. No matter if you’ve been coming around for months (or years), or this is your very first transformation rodeo – everyone is welcome to link up your projects at the bottom of this post.

A couple of months ago, during my guest house reveal, I shared the little pillow with the big flower. Ain’t she pretty? Several of you asked for a tutorial, but I never got around to it… until today.

To start, you need 108 inch wide muslin (or 3 yards of any other fabric). You need three 4-inch strips. Just snip…

  …and rip.

Stitch the ends together, so you have one super long (at least 9 ft.) strip.

Now you’re gonna need a ruffler… unless you want to ruffle it by hand (and that’s cool, too.)

Fold the strip in half, putting the folded end into the ruffler.

Then ruffle it up! (My ruffler was set to ruffle every stitch, smallest gather, stitch length 4.0).

Once you’re all ruffled and stuff, now it’s time for the flower making to begin. Start at the end of your ruffle.

Take the end, and begin to roll it up. Not too tight, but good and snug.

After you get a couple of inches rolled, you’re ready to glue.

Just put down a dot, right on the seam line, and roll into it. Add another bit of glue every 2-3 inches, keeping it all held together.

You want to keep the folded edge as even as possible. It’s going to turn out a bit towards the end, but the closer together you keep it in the beginning, the better it will look.

Once it’s too big to hold in one hand, flip it upside down and you’re going to start gluing every inch of it. Just run a bead of glue, then lay the ruffle down as you go. It’s much easier at this point because it holds itself up.

Just glue & press the ruffle in until you get to the end. When you get to the end, just let it stop where it is, it’s ok, I promise.

See, the outer edges puff up a bit, but it just makes it prettier in the end.

You have a pillow form ready, right? I’ve found burlap is the easiest. Just make your form, then find a piece of glass (mine came out of an old frame I made into a chalkboard). {Find instructions for a pillow cover here.}

Slide the glass inside the form, putting it under where you want the flower to be.

Now take your flower, and smother the backside of it in hot glue. 

Gobs of glue, I tell ya.

Now smush the flower right where you want it on front of the pillow cover (on top of the glass.) Hold it there for a sec to let the lava hot glue quit oozing.

And now the magic happens….. after all those rounds of ruffles…

It’s done!

Just pop in your pillow form and you’re good to go. And that’s how you make the big fat flower pillow :)

Be sure to enter the $200 giveaway, it ends Friday at Midnight!

Sooooooo……. whatcha got? I wanna see – and so does everybody else! Please put your PERMALINK into the linky – and link back here so everyone can find all the great ideas. Please, please, PLEASE – pretty please DO NOT LINK TO A SHOP!!! Be sure to visit your neighbors and have fun – it is a party after all. *Please note: If you link up you are giving me permission to use your photos on my blog without contacting you (don’t worry, it’s only to show off your beautiful stuff!)*

Welllllllll…………. Let’er rip, tater chip!