Pillow Talk

I have wanted to update my pillow situation for my bed for awhile now. Paging through Pottery Barn or Crate and Barrel's catalogues always left me wanting a more beautiful bed. I started the beautifying process by updating my duvet cover. I have a really nice one from Ikea that's soft and nice (see it here), but a little boyish. I found a new one at Pottery Barn (over 50% off!) that I had to have. My bed immediately looked nicer.

Next I needed to update my body pillow cover. I purchased one from Target awhile back to help the bed situation, but it no longer went with my new duvet cover.

I was on the look out for a new cover when I noticed a stack of tapestries I had in my closet. I bought a bunch of them back when I worked at Urban Outfitters whenever they went on sale for $5. You just can't buy fabric that cheap. My bedroom walls are actually completely covered by tapestries for a fabric wallpaper effect. The hubby just told me the other day he loves that about our bedroom!

Back to the bed. One of the tapestries looked just right for a new pilow cover so I pulled it down.

I didn't want to make a zipper case (like the Target one was) because I thought it might get too complicated. I decided to go with a pocket enclosure style cover. I didn't have a pattern but I figured a pillow case has to be one of the easiest things ever to sew. I found some plain white scrap fabric I had and experimented. I got it right on the first try! All that was required were 4 seams. 2 were for finishing the ends of the fabric, then 2 sewn up the sides to creat the case. So easy.

I whipped out the tapestry and cut out the length I needed. I also cut a duplicate piece out of plain white linen I had so that the case was fully opaque. My body pillow is made of brown fabric and I didn't want to see through the one layer of tapestry. I carefully pinned everything together and sewed it up. I actually only needed 2 seams for this one becuase the tapestry already had a finished edge for the pocket part. I stuffed my pillow inside and stepped back.

My bed was looking better already but it was still missing something. I decided I needed a few large square pillows to hide our pillows that we use to sleep with. I own a ton of extra pillows in the exact size I wanted (my couch purchase came with more than 10 pillows) so now I had to find a good fabric.

I got an e-mail from Hancock about all linens being 40% off so I clicked on over to their site. Right there on the hompage was the perfect fabric staring back at me! I knew it was the one so I navigated to the linen section only to be totally disappointed to see that they didn't have it online. That same day I stopped in to my local store and checked there. No go. The next day I stopped at another Hancock's. Nothing there either. At this point I was pretty irritated. Who puts a picture of a product on their homepage and then doesn't sell it anywhere?!?! I contacted the head offices to see what was going on and if the fabric was available anywhere. I got a response the next day saying the fabric would ship to Wisconsin stores (no MN!) in mid March. I noticed that they removed the picture from their site that same day. I patiently waited for March and called the stores in WI each week to see if the fabric had come in. Nothing, nothing, nothing! I was about to give up when I saw the fabric was suddenly available online! I rushed over to my store and what do you know, there it was! They even had 2 colors, purple and green! I got a swatch of each to bring home and see what went with my bed. The purple ended up being a little too dark, but the green (the one I originally wanted) was perfect. I went back the next day and bought 3 yards.

The next day I whipped up three more cases, this time making all 4 seams. Still super easy! I stuffed the pillows and BAM, bed beautiful! I love making my bed now because it looks so pretty when I'm done. Lovely!