Another Pillow Cover

In keeping with the throw pillow cover theme, I thought I'd share my version. I finished these a few months ago, but forgot to take step by step pictures. When I'm crafting, I usually just try to blaze through it while I have the time, so I forget to do before and afters. Besides, I feel like my best creativity comes from looking at something someone else has done, then tweaking it a bit to make it my own. ( Is that still considered copying?) As was the case with these pillows, it was based on a basic tutorial, then I just kind of did trial and error until it looked decent.

Anyway, as you can see, our living room is BLAH! Brown, tan, beige, and blah. It definitely needed some color! When we moved to NC, I tossed all of our throw pillows. They were looking super nasty. You know how it goes, your kids (and perhaps even your spouse) drools or spills stuff all over them. After a while, they just aren't decorative anymore. I drove an hour and a half to the nearest JoAnn's (which is an old, tiny, junky one) to get some pillow forms. I was shocked at how expensive they were!!! So I scratched that plan and headed over to Marshall's. Again, I was surprised at how pricey the pillows were. $20 each? I wasn't about to spend $80 on pillows I'd have to chuck in a year. I wandered back to the clearance section and found four unmatching beauties. What made them beauties? They were only $5 each and they had zippered covers! That meant I could take the covers off and make my own to put on them!!! And $5 for the nice, fluffy, sturdy feather pillows is a steal!



So I brought them home and there they sat on the couches...for months. I wasn't sure what color scheme I wanted to go with. We're renting our house, so we can't paint the walls.

Here are the original covers:

Finally, I decided on a color (and got some motivation) and got to it. I found the blue/white print fabric at Hobby Lobby on clearance before I left Buffalo. Sadly, our nearest HobLob here is 3 hours away. I wish I had bought more of it, but even on clearance, it was still not super cheap.

I knew I wanted removable covers so that I could wash them, but I have very basic sewing skills. Zippers were out of the question. So the basic pillow cover is from this tutorial. On the solid blue ones, I decided to do a ruffle in the center. I got my inspiration from this tutorial, but here's where the tweaking came in. The fabric I used is a little stiffer than normal cotton, so I thought the ruffle should be a little more structured. The fabric's not really "fluffy". I eyeballed the width of each ruffle, making one smaller than the other. The length was about twice as long as the pillow. I hemmed the edges, laid them out on the pillow top and started creating the larger ruffle. I made the folds until they looked pretty even, then pinned it to the center of the pillow. I did the same with the smaller, top ruffle, but made the ruffle folds facing the opposite direction. Have I lost you? This is probably where some good "action" shots would come in, but alas, there's none. Once everything was pinned in place, I just sewed right down the center of the stacked ruffles, onto the pillow top. Then I just sewed the back pieces to the front and stuffed the pillow inside.

It's such a good thing to have removable covers because of this girl:

Last weekend, after eating a hot dog, I told Ruby to wipe the ketchup off of her face. She immediately ran from the kitchen to the living room and buried her face in the white and blue pillow. Ketchup. I just took the cover off, sprayed some stain remover on it, and threw it in the washer on the delicate cycle. Good as new!