Pillow Talk - Nursery

The elephant towel I got (from Anthropologie, fyi!) while out on my nursery loot shopping trip with Erin has been my inspiration / color pallet for the entire room.  My plan when buying it was to turn it into a pillow.

So, that's exactly what I did.  I took a brown napkin I had left over from my napkin pillows with fabri tac project in the daybed room, and sewed it onto the back of this tea towel.

And here's the front :

My tea towel was a little longer than my napkin, so I just sewed along the napkin hem, and cut off the excess fabric that hung over.

Wait...shut the front door...did I just say sewed?!  Yep!  I did!!  Erin came over a few weeks ago and taught me how to sew.

Slight problem though...I'm impatient.  Which doesn't bode well with sewing.  I didn't want this to be a permanent pillow...I wanted to be able to remove the cover and wash it when necessary.  Because I'm impatient, I didn't really think about how to implement that until I got three out of the four sides done.  Then I decided I'd just flap over the pillow for now, tuck it in, and maybe add a zipper later.  So this is where my elephant pillow's top currently stands :

I decided I'd get smarter with my next two pillows I wanted to make.  I had two napkins for the front that I loved the pattern of, and my dark pink fabric accented the back perfectly.

I cut laid out my napkin, and used it to cut out the shape/size of my fabric, leaving excess around the sides to account for seams.

Here's where I thought I got really smart.  To solve my wanting to be able to wash the pillow case dilema, I decided I'd make an envelope style pillow.  So, I cut my back fabric into one third and two third segments...

Used these cool clips to hold my hem line in place

Got excited that my hem turned out semi decent looking...

Sewed the right sides (the sides you want everyone to see) together, and wala!

This is my pillow inside out.  It's not perfect, but you won't see the hem/seam lines because I sewed it inside out.  I was so pleased with myself at this point.  I flipped my pillow cover right side out, and shoved my pillow in...

Woot!!  Minus needing ironing, look how pretty that pillow is!!!

Untill ...

you flip her over...

And then she looks like me when I try to get away with not wearing maternity jeans.  The pillow is too fat!  Sigh.  Realistically I didn't care enough to scrap it.  It's the back of the pillow for crying out loud...and I did it all.by.myself.  I know, it looks like my 5 year old self did it, but that's besides the point.

I really wanted to make two of these, so I decided to cut MORE fabric for the second one for the back.  But I'm impatient, remember?  So instead of recognizing that I was too tired to do this right, I attempted to make my second pillow...

I messed up.  I sewed the right sides together for half of the pillow, and the wrong and right side together for the second half of the pillow.  I know there's tutorials on how to measure for this, but I just decided I needed about an extra 6 inches and went for it.  This is the sad, sad shape of the back of my 2nd pillow.

But again, it's the back, so I don't really care.

I did want to make two MORE pillows though.  I started a different night before bed and decided that since I was tired, I'd resort to my old trust fabri-tac ways.

I cut out my fabric to 20'' (my two insert pillows are 18'', so that allowed for a 'seam'.)

Then cut my line for my envelope...

Then added a bead of fabric tac around the outside of the full pillow and pressed together the fabric.  I let it sit overnight to dry (for two pillows), and had this in the morning for the backside :

I was so excited and anxious to get my pillow inside of here...it really looked half way decent!!  So I shoved it in there, and ...

BOOO!!!  Apparently the magic of fabri-tac is lost on some fabrics.  SO SAD!

Last night I took both of these half put together pillows and sewed them up instead.  They're not perfect either, but hey...I'm just a beginner!  Lesson learned though : sometimes sewing IS easier than fabri-tac.

Here's the end result of all 5 of my pillow adventures :

They might be a little rough around the edges, but they're good enough for me!

Yes, I know...worlds longest post on pillows!  I really do love using napkins and tea towels though as my face for pillows.  I can get so much more bang for my buck that way.

Hope everyone's had a great week so far.  I don't know that I'll have time to post again this week, I have my sister in town until Friday morning.  So...I hope everyone has a great weekend too!

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