Pattern review: Jelly Roll floor pillows

Pattern: Jelly Roll floor pillow, from the Moda Bakeshop

Fabric: Amy Butler Jelly Roll from her Cameo collection, plus a few extras and 2 yards of backing fabric

Other: 5 pounds of stuffing, large cording for the piping, covered button kit

Notes:

I wanted to make a cat bed for my kitties that they could share, and at 44″ across this is plenty big enough for two (at least when Leon, the maine coon above, doesn’t decide to make himself enormous!)  The pattern calls for 1 jelly roll, but be aware that non Moda rolls are sometimes smaller – I needed to buy a few extra 1/4 yard pieces to make mine large en0ugh.

The pillow wasn’t hard to sew, but it as a little boring.  I recommend doing as the pattern says and cutting each piece after it is sew onto the whole – otherwise it’s hard to keep the ends from shredding.  If you do make this, be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the pattern, where she mentions trimming it up every 10 strips or so.  This is very necessary – otherwise you will have a hole in the middle!  I thought it would look odd, but you cannot tell.

I bought shredded foam fill from Amazon to stuff the pillow.  It’s sort of bits and pieces of various foams.  It arrives vacuum sealed, but if you open it up it will double in size very quickly.  I used nearly 5 pounds of the stuff (I had to order twice, but I’d recommend just ordering the large size if you don’t have Amazon Prime shipping.)  It’s extremely messy to use – do it outside!  The resulting pillow is very soft and bouncy, perhaps a tad lumpy (it is made of chunks of foam after all) but in my experience cats do not care a bit about softness, and can in fact generally be found sleeping on the most uncomfortable things (Leon likes to sleep on top of pairs of shoes for some reason, high heels and all).

They have since managed to remove the button twice, so I gave up – they don’t get one!  They spend a lot of time now cuddling on the pillow – it’s so sweet, and it will give them somewhere warm to lay this winter (it’s already getting cold here!)  I definitely recommend the pattern, just be aware that it is rather a lot of repetition!