Fab Four Pillows for my Fab Brother

Fab4 Pillow for my Brother

My brother and I share a birthday. He is an award-winning teacher and Model Legislature coach. He is also a talented professional rock musician (check out some of his songs here) with a golden voice. When we were teens, his favorite band was the Beatles. Across the hall, in the car, and just hanging out, I listened to hundreds of hours of Beatles albums as my brother mastered guitar and vocal parts. We would sing together, along with our younger sister. Our Mom was so enamored of our sibling rendition of Help! that she still makes us sing it at family gatherings nearly three decades later. This is now traumatizing because we can't remember the order of the verses and my sister and I can never figure out which of us is suposed to sing which part. We've mostly moved on to other songs and newer artists, but, when we were growing up, it was pure fun.

My fabric habit frequently has me cruising ebay for bargains. A few months ago, I found a fabric sample book for the Fab4 line by British furniture designer Andrew Martin. It featured tapestry renditions of the inner gatefold from the iconic album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, along with coordinating fabrics with funky chenille stripes.

Sgt. Pepper's inner gatefold, spoofing military fashions

I knew this oversized book was going to provide the raw materials for my brother's birthday present, but what exactly would these swatches become? When the sample book arrived, the answer was clearly pillows.

Reverse of Fab4 pillow above. Note the camouflaged red zipper, left of center.

Making pillows like these does not involve terribly advanced skills. But I had not made pillows with trim before, so it was fun to learn this new technique. Even more fun was hunting for the perfect trim (ebay again) to echo the cords and epaulets on the costumes worn by the Fab Four. I chose a twisted rayon lip cord in blue and gold for the first pillow, above. For the second pillow, below, which featured a taupe-gray-scale rendition of the same album art, I chose fringe trim in a matching taupe.

Fab4 Pillow #2, in taupe-gray-scale, with fun fringe trim

Reverse of Fab4 Pillow #2, with centered gray zipper, almost camouflaged

Thank you, brother, for being in my life! I love you to pieces!

Here we are looking pretty fab ourselves, in the mid-seventies (you can tell, right?).

Me and my Bro, about a decade after Sgt. Pepper's

And almost forty years later...