I just couldn’t get the gauge right; every swatch was too big no matter what I tried. Therefore, I modified the pattern and wound up with a pillow that is a 14” square.

Used mattress stitch to seam the sides; not a big fan of this since the side patterns don’t exactly match up.
Used fake grafting to seam the top and bottom; this turned out well.

Next time, I might decrease my needle size for the button band. I’m not crazy about how the rubbing looks a little loose to me.