In a medieval-style barter of goods and services, I made some pillows in exchange for holiday cat sitting. They are very basic floor pillows. The challenge was to make the largest pillows possible with only 1 yard of each fabric. The solution: box pillows.

All my pillow sewing happens with help from the patterns from the book , which while published in 2002, features way out of date images from the mid 90s. It has great instructions though... just imagine different fabrics.

Box pillows are made by cutting two squares, then sewing a long strip of fabric between them. This worked well for the limited fabric situation. I cut two 21-inch squares and a 4-inch strip for the boxing. The 21-inch squares just fit from a 44-inch wide piece of fabric (minus selvage).

For the inside, I used 24-inch bamboo pillow forms. On a thanksgiving visit to an upstate joanns superstore, I surveyed all available filllers. The super cheap poly-fills just seemed so artificial. Everything was 50% off anyway, so I decided to go with bamboo. It has a really nice feel, silky and heavy.

There are invisible zippers in there too, so invisible you can't see them in the photos! The pillow forms worked pretty well. They are not the most boxy ever, if I made these again, I might try a foam insert.

Fabrics:
California Animals from Kokka - this is a nice linen/cotton blend.
Black and White mystery fabric - from Moda maybe?

Only 9 days until christmas and so many knits to do!

I have two knit projects that need to done and wrapped by the 25th. One is a shawl that has been 70% done for a couple months. All that is left are the edging rows. Those really long, every row a bit longer, edging rows. Phew. 21 rows left, plus the 5 bind off rows.

Its the Icarus shawl [ravelry link] from the Summer 2006 Interweave. I started it over the summer in a fit of lace enthusiasm. For the majority of the shawl, the pattern is made up of straight lines of yarnovers. The edging breaks out into a more complex motif. Overall, its supposed to resemble feathers and should be awesome when its done. Right now, it just kinda looks like a shawl in progress.

One thing that I like about knitting it now is that I blindly follow the charts, then every so often spread out the stitches and see this nice pattern emerging. It is good motivation.

Will I finish before Christmas? Who is this shawl for, anyway? We'll find out next week!