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All my pillow sewing happens with help from the patterns from the book , which while published in 2002, features way out of date images from the mid 90s.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?