New Bright Pillows

Another part of our Living Room "Refresh" was to get new pillows.  Since we were looking at adding a bit of citron yellow to our green and cream room, I set out on a mission to add some citron to our pillows.

I stopped at JoAnn's to pick up some great fabric for new pillows.  I found a great citron and cream swirl pattern that would be perfect in the room.  The next step was to find batting.  Now batting is not an expensive material, but it's not cheap either, so I had a thought.  Making new pillows means that we would have to find a place to store our old pillows.  But what if we didn't have to move our old pillows?

The fabric that I had purchased was a thick upholstery fabric, thick enough that color would not bleed through or be seen through the fabric.  So why not just COVER the old pillows?  I purchased 1.5 yards of the fabric for $7.50 - on sale of course!  Then started looking for a pattern for a pillow cover.

I found a great pattern for a pocket cover, so that we wouldn't need any type of clasp, button, zipper and could be easily moved.  So here is the easy step by step!

1.  Measure your pillow.  Take a flexible tape measure and measure from seam to seam across the top of the pillow, so that it's more of a "circumference" measurement.  Be sure to measure it both directions.  Our pillows were 20" square. 

2.  Lay out pieces.  The front piece is the easiest.  You add one inch to your pillow dimension to allow for seaming the cover together - 1/2" on each side.  Because our pillows were 20" square, our front piece is 21"x21".  The back comes in two pieces, one slightly larger than the other to account for the flap.  You want them to overlap to look closed and finished in the back.  I wanted a 3" overlap.  Add 1" to each piece for seaming again.  The two pieces for the back panels were 21"x12" & 21"x13" (21"x11" would make it JUST meet in the center, because I wanted the overlap I added one inch to one piece and two to the other)

3.  I hemmed the exposed edges of the back panels - 1/2" hem (as you can see in the photo above).  Then I pinned the entire pillow together, remember to pin the fabric so that the right sides are facing each other.  You should be looking at the back of the fabric while you are sewing.  I pinned the cover together with the larger flap on the underside of the two flaps, so that it would end up on the outside when turned right side out.  Place the pins in about 2" so that you can sew without having to remove the pins.

4.  Turn the covers right side out and iron flat.

5.  Fill with your existing pillows.

We had enough fabric to make a small bolster pillow, and I had some left over batting in the basement from a past project,  just enough to fill the small pillow.  So for $7.50 and a little hard work, this was the finished product. 

They are so bright and cheery and will make a perfect addition to our final Living Room Refresh.  What do you think?  This project is easy enough for anyone to accomplish!