Bump and baby pillow

Here as promised is the reason for all those lovely, juicy coloured fabrics. Despite the temptations of all the scans I'm having for this baby, we still don't want to know whether it's a boy or a girl. This obviously means that I can't start sewing or knitting in girly colours as there's a 50:50 chance it's a 'he'. However, since borrowing a certain Kitty B's feeding pillow back when I was feeding P, I've been meaning to acquire one, and was only really put off by the price, which always seemed a bit excessive for what it was. This pregnancy I had two thoughts- firstly, why the heck didn't I make one as it would be cheaper and secondly, as I'm a girly, why can't my feeding pillow be girly-coloured, even if the baby turns out to be the non-girly variety?
So here's what I did:
Selected some of my favourite zingy coloured scraps and random fat quarters, then lined them up in an 'artfully hotch-potch' way, pinned, tacked, then sewed them together.



Then, using a paper template kindly provided by the self-same Kitty, and with some- ahem- 'help' from the big-brother-to-be, I cut what appeared to be two boomerang shapes from my hotch-potch pieces.




Slightly smaller boomerangs were cut out from some brushed cotton and sewn together to make the inner layer, leaving a hole for filling later.


I'm very proud to report that by taxing my little grey cells I managed to set in a vintage zipper on the inner curve of the outer layer, before sewing the rest of the seams.


There followed a short wait for these to arrive in the post. I had originally hoped to stuff the pillow entirely in the spelt husks, but found that 500g made for a rather floppy pillow. By the way, as if jam funnels weren't useful enough in their intended role, they also prove to be invaluable for feeding spelt husks into pillows! Anyway, to solve the floppy problem, I used a layer of natural wool from a fleece I acquired and washed last year to make a peg-loom rug. It's created a nice effect in the end, with a bean-baggy, fit-to-your curves effect on one side of the pillow and smoother, sproingy softness on the other. At this point I would think that, when feeding, the bean bag side will be on my lap so that the baby is on the more stable and less rustling side. Until then, it's going to be getting some use as a bed-time bump support.

Girly? Yes. Full of bright, summery loveliness? Definitely. Boy or girl, I don't think the baby will mind. Although it does need an iron, when this tired pregnant lady can be bothered to!