Ugly Fabric Challenge

A few months ago, everyone was asked to bring an "ugly fabric" fat quarter to our monthly guild meeting.  All the fabrics were thrown into a bag and each person blindly drew one out.  Mine was a floral piece featuring brown, baby blue, and lime green - not something I would have picked for so many reasons!  I was stuck on what to make with it for a long time, but then the solution fell into my lap.  Suzy recommended making a test block before starting the Modern Fans Quilt Along and I decided I might as well combine the two exercises.

I dug through my stash and was surprised to find that I actually had brown and lime solids that matched the floral.  I threw it in a bright blue for a little contrast and finished off the pillow with a brown stripe that was bought for a project I later abandoned.  The end result was surprisingly not ugly at all!

The floral fabric fabric grew on me so much that I used the rest of the fat quarter to finish the back of the pillow.

The pillow measures about 15.5 inches square.  I make all my own pillow forms, stuffing them with cut-up pieces of extra batting (of which I have a seemingly endless supply!).  I wanted to finish this without binding, but I hate having raw edges inside my pillow.  I stumbled across this Magic Facing tutorial by Latifah Saafir and it was exactly what I was looking for!  The only change I made was to baste my back pieces to the pillow front all the way around before I added the magic facing, which is a personal preference.  I see a lot more binding-less pillows in my future!