Space Quillow

Space Quillow

This Space Quillow is roughly a twin-bed size. In general with a quillow the simplest way is to have three blocks wide and four blocks long, so you fold the left side block row to cover the middle block row, then the right side row over to cover what you've just folded, and then you fold the bottom up to the top, and what's now the bottom gets folded up to the top again.

Then you reach inside the pocket on the back and flip the whole thing inside out (like putting a pair of socks together). It's difficult the first time, but easy once you figure it out. The space station you see here is not visible once it's folded into a pillow. On the other side of the space station (between it and the back of the quilt) is a launching rocket, and that becomes the front of the pillow.

Actually so long as the ratio is 3 parts wide to 4 parts long it works, but the bigger the quillow, the more awkard it is to fold into a pillow. This quillow had only nine different scenes. Adding a fourth row would have meant duplicating squares which looked awkward, so instead I added borders that were longer than they were wide to make the proportions correct.
This meant the resulting pillow also has a wider border at the bottom than the sides, as you see. I made 4 pillows from extra scenes. The folded up quillow is the launching scene on the top left.
This quillow is tied at intervals, rather than being quilted. Commercially made quillows are made that way, because the pocket on the back can't be quilted down and if it's machine sewn down after the quilting it adds lines that show on the front and don't match the quilting which is already there. After making this one, I figured out a 'get around' by hand-sewing the pockets on the back just through the backing fabric and the batting, but not letting the needle go through to the front. It's fussy work, but it looks and feels so much better that I used that method on all the other quillows.