Who Doesn’t Like a Good Pillow

Last I showed you our bedroom was looking like this…

We had purchased some new bedding that we fell for at Target and just to keep you all posted it is super comfy and working out great, it’s even char man approved.

How cute is he?  Anyway, this bed was much in need of some pillows to beef it up a bit.  So, I got to hang out with my sewing machine for a little bit.  I decided to just cover the old pillows that were on this bed previously…

I’m talking about those three blue guys on the bed.  Here’s what I did…

I started by taking some scissor and slicing those old covers that I had previously made right off(yes I am recovering previously covered pillows, no waste here).  Once I had my old pillows ready to be recovered I needed to decide on what fabric I wanted to use.  I thought that I definitely needed to go with a lighter color since the bedding is pretty dark.  I thought white would be nice and I just so happened to already own the perfect fabric for the job.

It’s the white fabric that I used on the cornice in our room…

Once I had decided on the fabric I cut it about an inch wider than the pillow’s length on each of the four sides.  I had to cut four squares, one front and one back piece for each pillow…

Look at those snazzy squares.  From there I sewed three sides of the fabric together back side of the fabric facing outward…

For the last side that was left open, I sewed a small portion of this side shut. I sewed inward from the corners leaving a small gap open in the center. This probably makes no sense, hopefully this picture will help…

See how the top and the bottom are sewed about an inch and a half inward?  Then I flipped it inside out.

I had to make sure I pushed the corners out completely, they got stuck slightly because it is a thicker fabric.

From there I just shoved the pillow inside.

Once the pillow was inside I flipped the extra fabric around the hole inside as well.   Then I just needed to sew that sucker up.  I made sure the folds were even and I used the sewing machine to sew the last side shut.

See what I mean?

Then I just did that all over again for the second pillow.  And now I have this…

It was still a little too plain for me, so I picked up this guy at the Dillard’s clearance center for $2.  Yes, $2!

Perfect combination of gray and white right?  I am pleased with this pillow, makes me love our new bedding!

I think I will eventually buy a couple shams or possibly make them, but for now our gray pillow cases will do.  So here is our bedroom now.

Making Some Cornices

While Kent and Justin tackled installing the screen for the patio, Sandy and I did a project of our own.  We made a couple cornices to give my windows some character.  The plan was to make and install a cornice for the master bedroom.  We went to a fabric store in Jacksonville called Calico Corners.  We have been there before and they have a wide variety of nice fabric.  I had previously stopped at Joann Fabrics and Hobby Lobby to find something that I thought would work well in the bedroom, but had no luck.  Originally we were looking for something in the blue or gray range with a pattern.  They really did not have anything that caught my eye in either of those colors.  The other option I knew I had would be white, since I had a few white items in the room as well(rocking chair, trim and white ceramic dog.)  So we headed over to the white fabric section and found this…

It’s a pure white fabric with a little textured pattern.  I love it, it is very thick and will cover well.  Also I think the indentation of the textured pattern makes it look like it has some gray hues to it.  It matched well with the swatch I brought of my paint color and the pillow sham I also brought for comparison.  So we purchased 3 yards and were on our way.  For this project Sandy had previously purchased the wood from Lowe’s.  The wood piece was 8 foot long and about 12 inches tall.  Kent cut the wood and added end caps to the ends, where it would eventually attach to the walls.  Which left us with something like this…

From there we added a layer of foam that we got from Joann Fabrics.  We attached the foam layer by pulling it tightly around the edges of the wood and stapling it in place.

Once the foam layer was in place it looked like this…

From there we added the fabric pretty much the same way as the foam.  This time we tried not to pull the fabric too tight because we didn’t want to have indentations where the staples were holding it in place(if that makes any sense.)

Once we had the whole cornice covered in fabric, we set it aside to be hung later.  For that part we would need Kent or Justin’s help and they were still hard at work.  So we decided to head back out and make one more cornice for the living room.  We went to Joann Fabrics to see if they had a fabric that might work well.  That is where I found this fabric…

Which I love! I think I love it a little more every time I look at it.  It is light tan with a darker tan in some crazy tribal-ish pattern.  So once again we got everything home and assembled this cornice the same way as the first.

Once Kent and Justin were done with the patio they helped us hang the living room cornice.  It is attached to the wall with an L bracket.

See what I mean?

And here is all assembled and hung. I love it! Makes me wanna do a little dance.

Justin and I then hung the other cornice this morning…

These pictures are horribly dark, the light from the window makes it close to impossible to get a good picture.

I am so happy with the way they turned out.  The windows were good before but now they feel finished.