What to do with all those large print fat quarters in your stash? If you cut them into little pieces you lose the pretty picture, so why not use them for little ornamental pillows? The two shown here are 12" and 10" squares, covered in fabrics from the Flower Show II collection by Benartex Studios. Each one used three fat quarters - one large print for the front, and two coordinating prints for the back and the piping along the edge.

A pillow cover is just two squares of fabric, right? Well, not quite. Have you ever noticed how pointy the corners of some pillows are? That's because there's extra fabric at the corners that forms a "dog ear." To see why, measure a pillow from corner to corner. Then measure from side to side, over the center of the pillow. My little pillow measures 10" from corner to corner, but 11" from side to side. To counteract this, I cut a bit off each corner as shown in the illustration. The amount depends on the size and fullness of the pillow, but I usually start with 1/2" at the corner, tapering to nothing about 3" toward the center. You can see in the photos that my corners are pretty close to square rather than pointy.

Next time: Piped edges!