Kicking Pillows

I’ve been on a bit of a pillow kick lately. I bought some sweaters a while back to turn into pillows for my livingroom and finally got around to it the other day. I have to shrink up the front pillowcase a bit, it’s a bit wide. The one behind turned out a bit sad and misshapen so it’s hiding back there for a reason, but it’s perfect to shove behind my back. The nicer pillow was kind of an ugly sweater, I think. Covered in pearl and rhinestone buttons, including the sleeves, it was… a lot. I paid around $2 and cackled all the way home, then asked Chris if he liked my pretty new sweater. I was expecting awkward silence but I like to take home ugly things and pretend I love them and then laugh and explain what I’m doing with them, so he had picked up on the pattern and was on to me. Whatevs.

When I did the second pillow I had learned from my mistakes a little bit, and decided I would make my pillow open-and-closeable. Next time again, I’ll do this a bit better; After I’d already cut out my pillow shapes, I decided to use the bottom hem of the sweater as my button plackets. So I had to piece it together a bit, but next time I would just cut off the bottom hem first and have the front and back pieces as two perfectly good placket pieces. This sweater had an actual hem instead of ribbing so it worked out quite perfectly. Add in some fabric-covered buttons and you have a happy pillow. Nicole tried to steal this sparkly princessy pillow and refused to give it back, until bedtime when she realized that sparkly gem-covered pillows aren’t great for putting your face on.

Pillow forms are about $5 a pop at walstoremartplace. So for the pretty pillow, which (mildly imperfect placket ignored) would have cost about $30+ and not been washable, I spent about $7.

And for the record, I used white thread and a zig zag stitch on my sewing machine. Yes, my serger is perfect for this kind of project, but it had pink thread in it, which would have shown through. (ask how I know. Pillow number one, that’s how.) I have another project in mind which calls for that pink thread so I didn’t feel like rethreading it when a zig zag works perfectly fine and I knew this pillow had a life expectancy of about a year. (I have kids and a dog. The dog likes to sleep on it like a big priss, and the kids like to throw it on the floor for her because it looks funny.) After the pillow is permanently stained and half the buttons are gone, I can take the pillow form and make a new pillow! 

Tomorrow I’ll share an even cooler pillow project that will come with a bit of a how-to. I’m trying to decide if I should go for a full-blown tutorial, since I’m pretty sure I made it up, but I have to do a quick search first to confirm that. If I do do a full tutorial I won’t reveal the project until I do.

I’ve been very on-topic and that’s almost disturbing, so I’ll random it up a bit with a little tale I just remembered. I like to self-diagnose on google and WebMD and a few months ago I was feeling completely exhausted and under the weather. I had some cramping as well. I plugged all my symptoms into Web MD and I was informed that I was experiencing terrible PMS, or pregnant.

“Stupid WebMD. Wrong on both counts.”

Lol nope.