Floor Pillow Lounger Project

I could just show you some great pictures of our finished pillow loungers and pretend IT WAS EASY...

You know -- like all those cooking shows...where every dish comes out of the oven, magically cooked, looking delicious...

We KNEW where we were headed -- and it seemed simple enough...

But -- it didn't go quite that easily...believe me...THAT is an understatement.

The first time I saw the pillow lounger was at my friend Anne's house. She warned me that they took up a lot of room -- and, of course, buying four pillows and four pillowcase can get kind of pricey.

But, I had a better plan and I decided to make Lilly a four-pillow-lounger for Christmas. The Pinterest version is simply four purchased pillowcases. AND OF COURSE I can improve on that idea! So, one night, I started with a zebra striped flat sheet. My plan was to simply fold the sheet, and sew straight lines to create four openings.

Are you already laughing at me? I had completely forgot how hard it is to sew a straight line in the middle of a large piece of fabric. Yikes...with all that large expanse of fabric hanging off both sides of my sewing machine. IMPOSSIBLE to pin enough to insure a straight line...

After fighting with the sheet for three hours -- I finally realized it was not cut on the straight of grain -- so it kept twisting more and more with each stitch...

I gave up. AFTER THREE HOURS!! Yikes. I ripped out all the stitches -- and decided to just make four crappy pillowcases out of the zebra sheet. (which I now hated).

Still determined to improve on the design, instead of having all the openings facing the same direction -- I alternated them. My logic was that if a child carries it the wrong way, all the pillows will fall out. What I didn't think through was that, by doing it my way, no matter how the child carries it, two pillows will fall out. Crap (and I am cleaning up the cursing here, for your benefit). Although I did manage to finish the project (after at least 12 hours) -- I was so unhappy with it, I decided not to give it to Lilly for Christmas.

But, when Ronda and I talked about what we'd do with the girls for the Featherweight Day -- I thought the four pillow lounger would be the perfect project. At this point, I realized that the answer to falling-out pillows was to add a fold-back pocket at the open end. DUH!!

The girls could pick out flannel fabric from Ronda's extensive stash -- and oh, yes -- PERFECT. We've got this!!

We bought four cheapo pillows from Walmart ($2.25 each) ...

We thought we could use the plastic bag they came in to make a pattern...

It seemed like such a good idea at the time...and, frankly, I thought I'd already made all the big mistakes the week before Christmas.

Even now -- looking back -- I can't really figure out how we managed to screw it up so many times. We kept making mistakes, one after another.

Ronda was waiting for me to do the math -- and I was waiting for HER to do the math. Then, we were hung up on having each pillowcase made out of the same fabric -- but many of her flannel pieces were only one yard...

I visualized each pillowcase being made out of one long piece, with the fold at the end, and two side seams....But Ronda was trying to make it work with one fold on a long side...but then, how to make the pocket at the end??

As you can see, we finally DID FIGURE IT OUT...but we nearly burned our brains up in the process...

Next week, I'm going to post ACTUAL DIRECTIONS...because I want to write it down BEFORE I FORGET HOW I DID IT!!