Shaggy Chic?

Shaggy, yes. Chic? Maybe. Perhaps you are scratching your head wondering just what this is. While it's difficult to photograph, you may recognize this as a pillow. It looks a little misshapen, but that's a trick of the camera (and not a good trick.) You know how sometimes you see a unique project and you just have to give it a try? That's what led to this creation. I saw a pillow like this one in a quilt shop and bought the pattern by Atkinson's Designs titled "Shaggy Chic." There are instructions for a raggedy rug, too, but I've stopped at the pillow for now. The project was lots of fun to sew, using 5" strips cut from various red fabrics.

Here's a close-up that shows all those narrow fringed strips.

I wondered how I'd cut all those strips, but then I happened upon this June Tailor strip cutting ruler among the supplies at our local sewing group. Voila! Narrow, even cuts were easy to make. You can see how a folded strip was cut to within a fraction of the fold, resulting in ready-to-sew strips.

I then sewed the fringed strips in evenly spaced rows across a marked background piece, using a top-stitch foot to guide the sewing lines. After assembling the pillow front and back, even those wide edges were fringed. I tossed the whole thing into the washer and dryer, and it fluffed and buffed itself right into the shaggy chic pillow you see. Now how easy was that? I had fun making it, but now what to do with it? It doesn't really go with anything in my home. But, after all, that's not really the point when we start playing with fabrics, is it? If I needed to know what to do with things before I began a project, it would really slow me down! So the project was fun, kept me happily occupied in the sewing room, and I learned some things. All of that counts big with me. And isn't that vintage hexagon quilt top behind the pillow a dandy? I just love those fabrics and what the quiltmaker did with them. Someday I'll have to do a post on some of the old quilts and tops in my collection.