Pillow Refresh

I spent the better part of this past week's sewing time making new pillow covers for this little window seat nook on our front stair landing. It's been on my mental to-do list for the better part of a year and I have looked at home dec fabric from time to time with this project in mind. I wasn't sure how I was going to combine the soft blues and greens that I love with the yellow in our stained glass until I saw that bird fabric. The colors are just what I wanted, the aqua and teal, soft green and the gold and bonus points for raspberry!

I had the cushion recovered by my upholsterer. She did it so quickly - about a week! - that I wasn't really ready to jump into the pillows, but I did anyways. Smartest move ever. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw the progression: fussy cutting the birds, making the aqua welt, moving on to the aqua pillows, layering and sewing down the flat trims, putting the brush fringe on the polka dots. What you didn't see was the good 40 minutes I fussed with an invisible zipper on the first pillow that just would not work. After a ton of wrestling and some swearing, I ripped that sucker out, threw it in the trash and decided to sew the pillow shut by hand. And I kept on hand stitching them shut as I realized that I had never once removed the covers on the previous pillows in 10+ years.

The result makes me happy, happy, happy! I smile every time I walk by. It was such a simple project - I am not sure what took me so long to get to it. But now that I have started, I may not stop. The family room pillows are looking a little worse for the wear....

(My tutorials on how to add a lapped zipper to your pillow and how to make piping for a pillow can be found here and here. I swear the zipper thing is easy - I just had a bum zip! Happy sewing!)