Never Too Many Pillows

I stumbled across Sensations Pomp Yarn and love how incredibly soft it was.  It felt like minky fabric.  I was dreaming of nice soft pillows for our couch. The difficulty was figuring how to cast on with this yarn.  There weren't any instructions in the store and I couldn't find anything online.  This yarn is not like Red Heart's Pomp a Doodle because the pom poms are small and so is the thread between each one.  I favor crochet and tried a hundred different ways to crochet with this yarn and tried a hundred different hooks.  It was not working.

(ignore the pillows in the middle~I made them last year and they have been very loved & slightly abused by boys who like to have pillow fights~ahem~namely my dear son and dear husband~the oversized third child)

I finally read somewhere on the Joanns forums that you could only use the knit stitch with this yarn and had to use the thumb method of casting on.  I tried this with the smallest knitting needles I has but they were still to large so back to the store I went and purchased a very small set of bamboo knitting needles.  Then the fun part began.  I was able to cast on a decent row of stitches with a neat row of  pompoms.

 With each new cast on it became easier.  The key was knitting every row and using the small size needles.  This makes a super soft double sided pattern.  I would have loved to be able to stick a pillow form between those two sides but you can't.

 Once I had knitted the four pillow fronts I pulled out the sewing machine to start putting some backs on them and fill them with pillow forms.  But I ran into a big snag.  YOU CANNOT USE A SEWING MACHINE.  The little pompoms got caught in the bobbin and there was a lot of sweating, hand wringing and tears as I tried to get this off the machine.  I have a Brother Embroidery machine.  The needle was stuck in the fabric and every time I tried to bring it up the machine beeped a warning.  It was wracking my nerves.  I thought this machine was going to bust and I would never have another as nice as this one.

I tried putting the feed dogs down and gently working the fabric out but it was not budging.  I finally looked at  some of the maintenance photos and figured out that I would need to take apart half of this machine to safely remove the fabric.  I tell you I was nervous and scared.  

I did not want to send this baby to the sewing machine hospital.  I was able to remove the front plate and the bobbin.  Then I removed the bobbin holder inside the machine.  I could then see exactly where this pompom was stuck.  By gently pulling and unwrapping it I managed to get it free.  I was elated.  This minor episode nearly gave me a heart attack.  All I could envision was the needle breaking off, falling into the machine and wrecking it.

 So now I had to sew each one of these by hand.  Not so bad except that your fingers get a little numb and I was already shaky from the crazy sewing machine episode.  Then I gave the machine some loving, a little cleaning and then tried sewing various stitches on normal fabric to make sure it was still working.  Thankfully, it is.

The pillows were a little plain so I added some rosettes.  Each was made with some bits of trim that were leftovers a friend gave me.

This one is my absolute favorite.

Isn't it gorgeous?

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