Y’all. I have a newfound appreciation for seamstresses. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve picked up a throw pillow at an interior design store and scoffed at the price. One-hundred dollars for a pillow!? I always think, “I can make that myself for $10!”
Well pardon me while I humbly insert foot in mouth.
Because I decided to undertake the $10 pillow project. And two weeks later I have my pillows. But gosh darn it they weren’t easy to make.
Here’s the back story:
I am an amateur sewer. I started making skirts and pajamas in grade school. My sister and I did win “Best in Show” for a quilt we submitted to the county fair. But in a town of 30,000 people, that’s not saying a lot.
Anyway. With Christmas approaching this year, I decided that I wanted to be that person who has Christmas themed bedding in their bedroom. A person who has time to decorate every room in their house. A person who doesn’t mind taking eight nine decorative pillows off of their bed every night before sleeping. And for that matter, a person who also doesn’t mind it when her kids jump on the bed and throw the pillows off when she finishes making the bed every morning. I can dream.
In the past I’ve made simple throw pillows like these for our couch:
These are nice and everything, but they’re missing that certain je ne sais quoi that you get with another style of throw pillow: the piped pillow.
You can just tell from the photo above that the piped pillow is so much more than a regular old throw pillow. It means that someone took that extra time to pick out another fabric, make piping, and then apply said piping to the original pattern. Plus piped pillows are more versatile because you can bring some funky prints into everyday decor by having either the piping or main pattern stay traditional.
Well, the point is, I couldn’t just have a regular old throw pillow for my bed. I needed piped pillows.
So I searched the internet and found this excellent tutorial for making piped pillows. And then I started to sew my little heart out.
I’ve had fabric in my closet upstairs for years that I’ve been planning to use for pillows, so I didn’t need to buy fabric. My only investment was heavy duty needles, this foot attachment
Between cutting the fabric, sewing the piping and then pinning the piping onto the pillow front and then sewing the piping onto the pillow front and then pinning on the pillow backs and then sewing on the pillow backs (whew!), each pillow took me about three hours to make. Add on to this time my breaking two needles because I didn’t realize until too late that I needed heavy duty needles.
Was it worth it? I’m not sure yet. My answer to that question is particularly compounded by the fact that PotteryBarn has nearly identical prefabricated pillow covers on sale right now. Here’s the link if you’re interested. But theirs aren’t piped, so I have that going for me.
Nevertheless, my bedroom looks Christmasy, and that was my goal all along. Plus the color of the piping on the plaid pillows matches the embroidery on my white duvet color.
It’s TBD on whether Mr. L and I will begin to resent the nine pillow thing. He was already getting frustrated with the three pillows I added a few months ago (that I wrote about here).
I’m also debating whether I should continue sewing more pillows for our living room couch.
The truth is I kind of want my life back. And the sewing machine out of Mr. L’s office. But those piped pillows sure are cute!
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