Bolstering My Ego

The Sunday after I made my couch pillows, I headed back into my studio for another stab at home decor. I had a rectangular piece of the pillow fabric left over, so decided to create a bolster. I'd checked at Wal-Mart, and they didn't have any bolster pillow forms in stock, so I decided to use items from my stash to see what I could manage.

I found a roll of quilt batting to use as stuffing. I found a couple squares of burgundy upholstery fabric left over from recovering the seats of the dining room chairs. And I found a long light green zipper in with my dressmaking supplies.

I came up with this long, slender bolster. It's ... slightly whacky. It's longer than I'd envisioned and more slender in profile than I'd intended. The red ends are a little odd, though they work since they match the chairs in the next room. But the part that made me feel good was figuring out how to sew a 20" zipper in a narrow cylinder. That part came out pretty darn snazzy!

So though my completed bolster is not what you'd call "well-proportioned," I'm still happy with the experiment. I "made something from nothing" because I didn't have to buy any new supplies. All materials came from my stash. I used my noggin to figure out the zipper -- and it turned out well. The biggest win is that working on this project got me back down into my Studio in front of my sewing machine. And that is a habit I plan to cultivate.

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