Everyone Except the Poodle!

Months ago Sherril and her husband were trying to sell their house. As part of their staging efforts, Sherril bought some red pillows - pretty ones for sure - but not really what she loved personally.

With the market being as flat as pancakes, paper, and anything else un-bumpy, their house didn't sell and they were left with attractive but somehow annoying red pillows.

When Sherril offered to let me bunk over after a presentation I was giving in the city and then sweetened the offer with the lure of her AMAZING chocolate-chip cookies, I couldn't resist (who could really?). For my part, I promised to bring my sewing machine to help conquer the dreaded red pillows.

We met at Home Fabrics  - the source of all inexpensive upholstery fabric in the western world and located the perfect $5 a yard fabric in seconds!

Here's Sherril with her miniature poodle, Buddy with the old red pillows.

Sherril chose a thick upholstery fabric that could withstand Buddy's favorite game - the old classic "put your ball on the pillow and bite the pillow to make the ball bounce up". Okay, maybe it's a game you have to be a poodle to really grasp the intricacies of...

Sherril's home is modern in flavor with an emphasis on natural elements and colors. So the organic lines in the fabric (wavy lines - if Dave is reading this) balance the blocks of color - taupe, turquoise and chocolate.

Once we were "jammied up", it took seconds to cut the fabric blocks to size and sew up the first two pillows. Sherril took a nervous start at sewing the third one but was delighted (so she said) with the finished result of her efforts.

Too many years in the classroom - or maybe my pushy nature - but when her high school freshman son checked out what we were doing, I had him sew up pillow number 4.  I'm not sure if it was that sewing was so interesting or the fact that he had a biology test the next day and was avoiding studying but he was a natural!

That left one other person who could see the fabric while pressing the foot pedal (Buddy is a miniature poodle after all)...Sherril's husband had been minding his own business in the den but with the pressure of the rest of us proclaiming how easy sewing pillows is...he saw that he would be back watching TV and reading his paper faster if he just took his turn.

The result of our family pillow flurry is a set of pillows that complement their leather furniture so well, you'd think they came as part of the original set!

Best of all, for our $15 investment, we actually had enough fabric for two more pillows and a table runner!

So everyone except the poodle made a pillow - what a happy ending...except if you are anything like me, you are probably almost burning with the most pressing question about this whole project...what happened to the cookies???

We did consume at least a dozen over tea and sewing and then Sherril tucked the rest into my bag before I drove off the next morning...to a Weight Watchers meeting.

I stayed within my weight range...and didn't even have to lean on the table during weigh-in - although I was shivering in my lack of clothes. The drive home though was cookie-filled and yummy - I have a whole other month to lose their weight, right?