Pillow excitement

So…I basically did almost everything I said I wasn’t going to do in my nesting post. I slipcovered my boxspring with a fitted sheet (easy), I bought a new duvet (majorly on sale, of course), I bought new fabric for curtains, and I made new pillows to match the new curtains and duvet. I also had two job interviews, wrote the methods section of one of my papers, and did some CS coding from scratch. I’m like Jessie Spano on caffeine pills.

As I mentioned earlier, there was (and maybe still is?) a huge sale on bedding at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I picked up two euro shams, which are 26″ x 26″ pillow covers. These were marked down to $9.99 each plus an additional 33% off. I had a $5 off $15 coupon, which means I got these for less than $5 each. I actually didn’t have $15 worth of stuff in my cart, so had to buy a Diet Coke to make up the difference. Anyway, these shams were cheap.

Amy Butler sham: before

The Amy Butler sham was awesome…for the most part. I don’t know if you can tell from the crappy cell phone photos, but the entire thing is embroidered. I wasn’t a big fan of the trim or the fabric on the back, so those came off. I replaced the back fabric with something from my stash. I also objected to the daisies on the front, so I made a 19″ x 19″ template for my pillows and strategically cut off the parts I didn’t want.

made a template out of a Whole Foods bag because I am classy

bye, daisies!

bye, ugly parts

Then I used this tutorial from Sew Mama Sew* and sewed a new cover that would fit my existing 18″ pillow. I did the same with the quilted sham. I didn’t really object to anything on that sham, but it was too big. So I ripped it apart, cut it down to size, and made a smaller cover with a zipper. The results look like so:

I should also note that I serged the edges of each piece to on the inside to prevent fraying. You can probably use a zig zag stitch to achieve the same effect.

The back pillow looks a little janky from the back in the photo, but looks fine in real life. Anyway, each pillow cost $5, so I’m not going to be too anal. It’s better than buying a $30+ cover from West Elm, that’s for sure.

They say the closer you get to finishing your dissertation, the more you craft. I think it’s the idea that you can see something come together so quickly, whereas the papers and analyses literally take years to complete. At my current crafting rate, this must mean my dissertation is almost done!

*The Sew Mama Sew pillow tutorial calls for some sort of adhesive for your zipper. I just used Jiffy Fuse, but you can also probably use a glue stick and be just fine.

Tagged as: apartment, making things, saving money