Local woman makes pillows from recycled denim

Guests of Washington?s Farmers Market were treated to quite a sight Thursday evening. Vendor Juanita Benedict made her farmer?s market and showed off many of her homemade trinkets. One of those was a spherical pillow made from sewn together pieces of recycled denim.

The pillows are composed of pieces of stuffing that are sewn together in the shape of cones. When the cones are all pointed inward the pillow takes the shape of a smooth sphere. However, the cones making up the pillow can be rotated to point outward, too.

?My mother used to make them and she was the one who explained it to me,? said Benedict, who lives in South English and works at the Crooked Creek Christian Camp south of Washington. ?My mom made them for us as children and she gave them to her nieces and nephews. I?ve had the pattern for years, but I had to do a little experimentation before I remembered how to do it. The first one is challenging until you figure out how the pieces go together.?

Benedict took up her mother?s hobby last Christmas when she made her own pillow.

?I decided to make them as Christmas gifts rather than buy gifts for my nieces and nephews,? she said. ?I have two nephews who would have been about a year old and a year and a half old.?

Before long, Benedict was taking more pillow orders.

?My nieces and nephews who live in Wellman wanted some, so I had to make three more for them,? she said. ?Then I made one for a friend who wanted one for her grandson.?

Benedict received high praise for her pillows. Her friends and family told her she should sell them. She saw that other people were selling them on the Internet, so she decided to give it a try. Thursday was not only her debut at the farmers market but also the first time she has ever sold the pillows.

?Several older people have told me they remember them from when they were children, so they must have been very popular at one time,? Benedict said.

Apart from denim, Benedict also uses remnants of corduroy garments and polyester fiber. Pillows were not the only handicraft Benedict sold at the market. She also sold little bags from recycled material or left over fabric.

?These little bags with a draw string could be used as a snack bag,? she said. ?If you don?t want to throw plastic bags away all the time, you can use these, which are washable. I made some for my nieces and nephews last year for Valentines Day and put candy in them.?

Another item Benedict had on display was a soft notebook cover.

?It is made from an old jumper I found at Goodwill,? she said. ?That?s a good way to get large pieces of fabric you can use for lots of projects.?

Benedict then decorated the notebook cover with a white trim on the spine and white trim around the pocket.