Shibori dyed pillows made from batting? Who knew! I did an experiment with Fairfield's organic Toasty Cotton Batting and Tulip's blue one-step dye, and it came out beautiful! The batting is robust enough to hold up to sewing into a pillow, and the one-step dye saturated the batting into fabulous and luxurious home decor.
Making giant tassels to add to the dyed batting pillows, enhanced the bountiful feeling of the batting. I made huge 24" pillows, and they were perfect to put on the pallet swing in our gazebo. Surrounded by blue paisley pillows, and orange corduroy pillows made with Poly-Fil, on top of a shibori-dyed cottow throw, the look was complete for my summer spot.
Start with Fairfield® Toasty Cotton™ 100% Natural Cotton Quilt Batting.
Rinse the batting to get it ready to receive the dye.
Place the batting into a glass container, or a disposable plastic container will do just fine.
Mix 3 Tulip One-Step Blue Tie-Dye Kits and pour over the batting.
You can't see the batting because the dye is too dense, but it's there.
I placed another vase on top of the batting to push it down and make ripples in the batting.
You can also tie the batting and then apply the dye if you choose.
Let the batting set in the dye at least 4 to 8 hours. I let mine set overnight.
The next morning I rinsed out the dye, until the water ran clear, then wrung out the water and hung it outside to dry.
I used a serger to sew the pillow together. If you don't have a serger, simply sew the seams and then sew a zigzag edge around every seam.
Turn the pillow, and stuff with Fairfield® Poly-Fil® and sew the opening to finish.
Now for the tassels I used extra heavy wool yarn to make 7" tassels.
Wind the yarn around the PattieWack Tassel Maker™ 15 times.
Tie the top of the tassel with 12" of yarn.
Bind the neck with 15" of yarn.
Cut the bottom of the tassel loops and pull off of the PattieWack Tassel Maker™.
Tie the tassels to the corner of the pillow, and repeat for all four corners.
I hope you'll love your shibori batting pillows as much as I do, and check back here on the PattieWack Blog for MORE projects!
