Pillow Problems Solved

About a year ago I decided my living and dining room needed to be re-decorated after 7 years in the house.  I found the couch I've been designing for years at Home Reserve and changed my whole color scheme.  This couch has storage under every seat (that is what I'd been dreaming of)!  From the beginning I planned on making throw pillows to pull bits of red (the color of the kitchen walls) into the living and dining rooms with shades of browns and teals to make the whole downstairs flow.

While treasure hunting in Home Goods, I found these pillows with all my colors:

Actually, the top two I found in a box at my house from my sister, the perfect size for my accent chairs.  In addition to being the perfect colors, they had another feature I loved:

Unfortunately they also had a feature I didn't like... the pillow form inside was feather and I'm allergic to feathers!  So, after a few days of sniffling and sneezing while sitting on my new [also American made] couch, the pillow forms were passed on to a friend, leaving me with the perfect pillow cases.  In my local stores I couldn't get the right size forms and when I finally got to a place that had the right size, they were not made in America, so I passed on them, determined to just make my own pillow forms from the piles of material I already have on hand.  As a temporary solution, I stuffed in my old bed pillows that I had just bought replacements for.

Life continued to happen and I never got around to making pillow forms and IronFish began complaining about the lumpiness of the throw pillows (also why they look kinda sad in the first picture).  Autumn came and I decided I would do those pillow forms and also picked up several thrift store sweaters because I had always intended to make winter pillow covers.  Then came Christmas, New Years and a few snow storms.....

Today, I walked passed the home section in Wal-mart and remembered those new bed pillows needed pillow liners/protector things.  Wal-mart actually carries pillow forms in their craft section that are made in America, however, they don't have the right size.  While I was there, I looked at the throw pillows on clearance to see if any of them were made in America and the right size to serve as my pillow forms (no luck), but I had a brainstorm when I got to the pillow liners, they came in a two pack for less than $4 and while not made in America, they were made in a country I'm good with, sized 20"x26", standard bed pillow.  I needed 20" square pillow forms...

Time and other projects were really my main obstacles to making the forms, but with a few pillow liners in hand, I save myself time and checked this off my list today!  Here is what I did:
1.  Fold over pillow liner to form a triangle, which gives us a square without doing any actual measuring

2.  I drew a line on the first one and then realized it fell right on a fold (for all of them) and didn't bother with the other two.  Be sure not to cut off the end with the zipper, you want to keep that!
3.  Serge along this line (or cut off and sew).  I didn't even bother turning it inside out, it's going inside another pillow after all.
4.  Now fill!  You could use fiberfill but I just cut open my old bed pillows and used that, keeping them out of a land fill.  Part of the reason I had replaced these was because aside from being pretty flat, I think they were left over from college!  That disgusting yellow thing is the outside of the pillow (OK, that will end up in a land fill) but with some pulling and fluffing the stuffing, it worked perfectly.

5.  Zip up after you've made sure to get the stuffing in the corners really well.

6.  Now the pillow form is ready to be stuffed into the pillow.  It may be hard to tell from the picture, but they actually look 100 times better and are incredibly more comfortable.

Now that the pillow forms are finally done, those thrifted sweaters are in the dryer, I'm determined to make my winter pillow covers before the next snow fall (which might actually happen tonight!)

Peace be with you,