Courthouse Step Pillow

I think one of the most scary things about sewing, when I had already become very good at knitting, is understanding the instructions and diagrams of sewing patterns. I find them so confusing and very non-intuitive. The first project that I decided to tackle from the Sew Gifts! book is a courthouse step pillow. I had previously made an envelope style pillow with a Craftsy class, so at least I understood pillow construction. I thought this would be easy ... ish.

I got fabric from Jo-Ann's, and started cutting. That's when I realized that rotary cutting is not as easy as it looked when other people did it. The ruler kept slipping, and it became such a problem that I ended up cutting the strips with my scissor. I had a really hard time cutting, which I did not expect.

Next came the sewing, which was also much more difficult than I expected. It's a simple quarter-inch seam, right? But it was not easy for me. I didn't pin, and my strips weren't straight, so the seamlines were all crooked. I'm lucky it's a pillow and size doesn't matter super much in the end.

When I put it together, I was surprised that it actually looks ... decent. But one of the seamlines along the edge kept busting open, so I know this pillow is merely for looks and cannot actually be used. I will definitely make a replacement some time!