Nesting Chairs Yellow and Gray Pillow

I love these limited release nesting chairs fabrics that I got as a lovely birthday gift from my mom, and was really excited to make this throw pillow.  While we currently have a beige couch I am really hoping that there will be a grey couch in our future, and I thought these fabrics would be great accents.  I recognize that it is slightly nuts that I am making throw pillows to go with a future couch, but I think they will look good with our current couch too and I really just love these fabrics.  I also used a few prints from Patty Young's Sanctuary line, which coordinated really well.

I got the design idea from a quilt in this blog post (which I read when I first found out about the DC Modern Quilt Guild - which I am very excited to now be a member of!), and as soon as I saw the quilt I thought it would make a great pillow design.  I'm not sure if this has a name, it seems kind of like a bento box design, although I didn't piece it the way you would usually piece a bento box.  I pieced the central square, then the white border, and then the outside borders, rather than piecing each quarter separately before combining.  This way I didn't have to worry about lining up the white borders to make a perfect square.

I lined the pieced front of the pillow with muslin rather than using batting, and I didn't want it to have a super quilted look, so I just did some subtle accent stitching in the white square.

I backed the pillow in a mid-weight grey fabric that I had in my stash, and I put in an invisible zipper along the bottom edge.  I have previously just put regular zippers in my pillows and this was the first invisible zipper I have ever sewn, with much assistance from Sew Katie Did's invisible zipper tutorial.  I just have a regular zipper foot, not a special one for invisible zippers, so I was very happy to find out it was still possible - and I think it turned out very well!

Overall, I am really happy with how this pillow turned out and am excited to make a few more out of these fabrics. [UPDATE:  I made two more coordinating pillows - blogged here.]  I'm entering this pillow in the March Blogger's Pillow Party over at Stitched in Color: