Silk Sari Ribbon Pillow - Custom Etsy Order

I met another wonderful person on etsy, who had the vision of using my silk sari ribbon pillow in a new and challenging way - and I'm so pleased with how it turned out! She had purchased new linens for a bedroom in royal blue, and wanted me to use only aquas/blues/purples for the ribbons, keeping the black background.
This wasn't quite the challenge - as these are my favorite colors as well! : )
The challenge was to create a *round* pillow instead of square - and I love how it turned out, so much that I might have to make one for myself!! I'm so happy she had the creativity to envision this pillow with only those colors being used, and round instead of square - not everyone can look at a photo of something and imagine it as something else entirely!! It was very inspiring.

Here is a shot of the pillow which she looked at originally,

or the "before" shot (which is also in another post on my blog):

Now, here are the photographs of the pillow I created, using her ideas!

(Please note: I have difficulty with my camera (or perhaps it is my monitor which has poor color quality), capturing the aquals/teals in any piece I photograph. To me, in person, this pillow has many more aquas and teals...I hope it is visible on other monitors, as I didn't play with the color balance on these photos at all like I usually do.)

This is created using high quality black cotton as the background, which I layered on top of fusible interfacing to help give the front side some shaping for its final form, as well as some sturdiness for sewing on layers of the silk sari ribbon. I had a lot of fun going through all of my skeins of silk sari ribbon to find all of the aquas/blues/purples - and I *love* how they look all layered together!! We opted for no trim, because I felt it would only detract from the design - it is already very textured and layered - a piece of textile art!

I did quite a bit of additional embellishment with hand-beading, and created a center of layered fibers sewn in swirls around the center, with some purple raw silk ribbon cut into a circle and layered for the centerpiece background. I tried using several different large beautiful buttons for the center - I even tried silk flowers, flowers I created with ribbons, layered fabrics, beading, etc - the center was a very tough decision!  I eventually rummaged through all of my embellishments, and found the perfect piece of "bling" - a vintage jewelry piece that was in the shape of a flower, with the beautiful royal blue stones - which would match the color of her bedspread - perfect, if I do say so myself!! : )

Soon I will be posting another pillow similar to this one, except this time square - I'm excited to see how the two pillows will look side by side. I'm sure it's going to be gorgeous!