Ring Bearer Pillow with Flower

DIY ring bearer pillow with fabric flower, made from wedding dress scraps

Until yesterday, I've been highly uninspired about ring bearer pillows.  All I had in mind was making it from scraps from my wedding dress.  I did some light googling, and came across this DIY silk flower ring pillow tutorial by Martha Stewart.  Perfect!

I started by cutting the fabric for the pillow - 9.5" squares of the lace, taffeta, and lining leftover from making my wedding dress.  I used the lining simply to make it stronger.  I put the right sides together, and sewed around the edges and all four corners, leaving about 3" unsewn so I could stuff the pillow.  I trimmed the edges off in the inside so that the corners would look better when turned right side out.

Then I stuffed the pillow.  My Mom suggests using small tufts of stuffing, and shredding it before you insert it.  She says otherwise it'll look lumpy.  No lumpy ring bearer pillows allowed!

Next I sewed through the center of the pillow to give it some dimension.

On to the fabric flower!  I cut long ovals from taffeta scraps from my dress.  The large ones were 10" long and about 4.5" wide.  The next size down were 8" long by 3.5" wide.  The tutorial I was using as my guide suggested using four sizes altogether, but once I started putting it all together, I found I didn't need those extra layers, likely because my fabric does a nice job of being poufy.

I cut 4 ovals of each size, for a total of 8 ovals.

The edges were unraveling a bit, so I held them close to the flame on a tealight candle and slightly melted the edges.  This also made them curl a bit, and I liked the effect!

Then I basted through the centerline of each oval, and gathered up the fabric.  To finish it off, I sewed through all the layers a few times.  I did this with all the ovals.

Next I layered two ovals of the same size to make an X-shape, and sewed them together. 

Then I stacked two X's of the same size to make one layer of the flower, and stitched all of that together.  I did the same with the smaller set of ovals.

Finally, I attached the two layers and a small ribbon to the pillow, sewing through the center to make it all nice and snug.  I arranged the petals aesthetically, and... ta da!

This project cost me about $4 for the bag of stuffing (of which I used about 20%), and all the fabric was free because it was scraps from my dress!  The ribbon I had hanging around from a long-ago project.  It took me about 4 hours total to make this.

I can't wait to see it walk down the aisle!!!

Bonnie Projects