Pillow process

I saw these sprocket pillows on Poppy Makes blog last week and thought it could be a fun project to sew together with George.  I did a rough fabric pull (about 18 prints) and then let him choose the ones he wanted in the pillow.  He wreaked havoc on the sewing room as I cut the spokes, and then he helped arrange them on the design wall.  I thought he'd help sew them together, but he was busy drawing pictures and wasn't interested in the sewing machine until I decided to quilt the pillow front (that can of spray baste catches his eye every time..).  I wanted to make a floor cushion for his room so I wanted it to be a bit sturdier than the Cluck Cluck Sew tutorial calls for.  I added a layer of batting and quilted the front and back, but left the side fabric strip unquilted. 
Things were going well (and fast!) until I sat with George in my lap yesterday to quilt the back.  I let him unscrew the regular foot and we put on the walking foot, and somehow (did I say something?) he said that he didn't want straight lines, but curvy lines instead.  Um, ok.  Whatever you want kid. 
So we took the walking foot off and put the free-motion foot on.  Of course George caught me a little off guard here, and I had no idea what sort of pattern I wanted to quilt with curvy lines. 
I did the worst possible thing-- I just started quilting.  With George on my lap and no plan, things went downhill fast.  10 minutes into it, I knew I needed to rip it all out and do it without him (and with a bit more of a design goal in mind).  I spent snippets of time throughout the rest of the day unpicking the mess and it was nearing midnight when I finally started over.  Thank god for twitter though, 'cause in the middle of the night when you need some quilting support and can't call anybody, it was nice to be able to tweet my problems and get support from friends online.
This is what it looks like from the back:

Grey thread, busy blue print-- you really can't see anything.  But from the inside..

Can you read backwards?  It was hard to get a good pic, but I quilted his name in there :)
Other fun things about the project:
I only had half a bag of poly-fil left over from god knows when, I've probably been carrying it around with me since 2002.  I was happy to finish it, but it wasn't enough, so I decided to use scrap batting to fill up the rest.  I read somewhere that somebody cuts up her batting scraps into little squares and uses it for dog bed filling.. if you know who I'm talking about send me the link because I'd love to give her credit. 

It worked out ok for this pillow, it's a little lumpy in some areas, but it's meant to be sat on, so I think it will all even out (or get smushed into place) in the end.  While George was stuffing it, I took a little video:

Not only was I short on stuffing, but I didn't have any suitable buttons to finish the project either.  So in the greatly satisfying vein of using what I had, I decided to cover my own buttons. 

Not that hard and I think I'd do it again.  It made me feel very "crafty."

The project was a fun one.  I don't usually make many pillows, but maybe that should change.  I love seeing handmade things around the house, and this was a lot easier and faster than plain old square pillow projects, which always stall at the zipper installation phase.  Anyway, I'm glad I made this one with George, and I hope it gets a lot of use in his new room.