Gathered Accent Pillow - What Was I Thinking?

I went on a hunt about a week ago for the perfect curtain material for our family room and since Hancock Fabric was having a 40% off upholstery and drapery sale I wanted to get fabric for accent pillows as well. After a LOT of browsing and putting fabric bolts in and out of my cart, I settled on three fabrics for pillows (1 main solid color and 2 accent colors) and found the perfect curtain fabric as well.  And through some crazy fluke in their pricing system, I got the 5 1/2 yards of dupioni silk fabric for my curtains at .50 cents a yard.  Yes, you read that correctly, I bought my curtains for $2.75!  I'm still in shock.

My main fabric for the pillows is a soft faux suede/corduroy mix.  One of the other fabrics is a lightweight, shimmery sort of rayon type of material.  The lady at Hancocks warned me that it might be tricky to sew.  Yeah sure, whatever lady...

Now what to do with these pillow fabrics? Over at Make It and Love It, Ashley provided a tutorial for a gathered pillow that I thought was the perfect solution for my shimmery (slippery) fabric.  Her pillow turned out so dang cute and I wanted that look for my couch.  So I dove in.

Things I've learned from this sewing project: 
#1. Listen to the ladies at the fabric stores, they know what they're talking about. 
#2. Don't make the most complex pillow out there as your first pillow (especially when you've never sewn a gathering stitch in your life). 
#3. Patience is a virtue.
#4. Shimmery, lightweight fabric is not ideal for gathered pillows and can cause excessive mumbled swear words on more than one occasion.
#5. I like to take on more than should - Wait, I already knew this... that one doesn't count.
#6. I still am psyched about sewing and trying new things, despite my frustrated efforts at a gathered pillow!

Here are some pictures of my work along the way and then the final result.

Look how pretty it shines in the lights!  HA! (grumble grumble)

I've sewn all the gather seems here and pinned the top.

Here I'm half way through sewing the gather seems to the lining.  This was the most tricky part of the whole project and took the longest.

All the seams are sewn to the lining now... almost there.

Couple of angles from the front.  And then a shot of the back which doesn't look nearly as pretty. And then one last shot close up of the gathers.  Hopefully no one looks too closely at this pillow because my stitches are all over the place!

Didn't turn out quite as cute as Ashley's but I still like it and think it will help tie all the other fabrics in the room together.  SO GLAD I'm done with this one.  Probably won't be attempting it again anytime soon.  But one things for sure, I'm a pro at gathering now and it won't be intimidated by cute gathered skirts for Addison any longer!