Bento Box pillow

I pulled this together this afternoon, for a friend at work. She's a big fan of colour, in any combination, the crazier the better, so I used a little bit of everything.

This is the first time I've done the bento box pattern - I always like how it looks, though I do think it looks better when you do work with fabrics that have very different values. (These ones don't, in general. Obviously the red is much darker than the white it's paired with, but the gold/stripped combo doesn't have much variation, and, well, neither do the others, really.) I didn't plan the bento very well, though, and I think it shows - I'd have liked to have the pink across from the red and the yellows across from one another, but somehow I couldn't seem to make it work and look good when I was doing the layout for the pillow. Not that I'm unhappy with it, just that I wish I'd been more... thoughtful about it. I also wish I'd paid attention to directionality when I cut out the striped fabric :D

Anyway, originally the plan was for two pillows, but it turned out that I didn't have enough pillow stuffing and so I had to turn it into one woefully under-stuffed pillow. If it were properly stuffed, you'd be able to see the border - a bright green with yellow, red, and pink dots (to help tie all the colours together, a bit).

The pillow is going to my friend with a note telling her that when I buy stuffing again, she's going to have to give it back for a couple days so I can rip it back open and stuff it properly. Or maybe even rip it apart and turn it into two pillows as it was meant to be.