Sweatershirt to Pillow for Mom

Mom's Photo from the Texas Ranch

This winter I mentioned to my parents that my sewing skills have gotten much better with all the mask making I was doing. I had finally made "Halloween" (they're pretty permanent) pillow covers for our couch.  Mom then produced an old sweatshirt that I remember both of my parents wearing growing up and said she was hanging on to it to make a pillow but hadn't gotten around to.

I was happy to do it, and really this was the first thing I made on my sewing machine after finishing and packing up all of my mask making stuff.  It's for a 17 x 17 pillow which seems standard? I'm used to starting with a pillow and creating one to fit, but it looks like it worked without knowing for sure what size pillow was going to go into it. 

I had originally thought I'd do a brown or green piping for this piece, but when I took it to the store maroon seemed to be the obvious color to go with. I had no idea that it would also match the couch it was going to live on!

I needed to use as much of the length left of the back of the sweatshirt for the pocket overlap. I decided  it would be a fun detail if I kept the very top back of the sweatshirt as a nod to its previous life.  The above photo is a detail of the top back of the pillow which was at the top back neck of the sweatshirt. 

I think I'm getting much more confident in my sewing because I am usually much more nervous to cut into something that I cannot reproduce.  I didn't really have that issue here, and it came together pretty easily. 

The sweatshirt was a little thick in areas (like that top neck portion), so the back piece sewn to the piping was a little bit of a struggle.  In my world I don't worry too much about the back as long as it holds and looks pretty good.  This is good practice for something else I need to work on for our bedroom.  I'm glad to have to piping practice and it looks so great at my parents' place down in Texas.