saga of the throw pillows

Last week I mentioned how we had rearranged our furniture before we hooked up the new TV.
We're happy with the layout for the most part,  but our dark colored furniture in the center of the room looked ....well, dark.

Thinking some light colored throw pillows would cheer things up, I bought some fabric to make a few.

I have been saving our old lumpy bed pillows, planning to use the stuffing from them for this very purpose.

The project started off so easy. I trimmed the fabric and squared it up, then sewed around the edges leaving an opening for stuffing.  That's when things got messy and difficult.

Have you ever opened a bed pillow?  There is stuffing in there...some is fluffy and can be pulled apart, but some is more tightly put together and has to be chopped up with scissors.

It took well over an hour to get all the stuffing apart and in to the new pillow.

The next bed pillow I opened was a different kind. Full of soft easily to shred stuffing.

oops, forgot to try and match stripes on the sides!

I thought everything was working like a charm while stuffing more new pillows...until looked down and noticed everything was covered with white dusty particles.

I whacked one of the newly stuffed pillows a couple of times with my hand, and sure enough...white fibers sifted right out through the fabric.  I had to empty both of those out and shake them clean outside.

At this point I stopped everything and started shopping for throw pillows on Amazon. 

But then I remembered a big bag of quilt batting scraps that I had been saving for....hmmm, what am I saving those for?  This seems like the time to use them up.

So, at least another hour shredding and chopping enough of that to stuff one more pillow.

I'm not even sure that I like them now...and the fabrics don't look as good together as they did at the store.

At least I used up some stuff and I know I can  throw away the rest of my old bed pillows.