I took on the project of sewing pillow covers for our new daybed. Having basic sewing knowledge, I figured this would be a good challenge for me given I had decided to buy some pretty pricey fabrics and I wanted to make the covers with concealed zippers.
If you want to make a pillow cover without a zip closure, it's about the easiest sewing project you could do. It's sewing a straight line in a square.
If you do want to add a zipper, it's just a little bit harder. But the final step of stuffing the pillow, which is a pain if you are not using a zipper because you have to sew the pillow closed by hand once the pillow fill is inside, is way way easier with a zip closure.
I found the whole thing pretty intimidating, to be honest. I was planning on sewing nine pillows in all. The thought paralized me for a few weeeks while I hemmed and hawed about buying the fabric. I knew once I had the fabric, I would have no excuse not to start on the fabrication since my husband would be eager to have the large rolls of fabric gone.
Once I read some advice online and visualized all the steps in my head, I felt I was ready to jump in. Here is the most useful site I used to wrap my mind around the process: tutorial on pillows with concealed/invisible zippers.
Going into this, I knew I might hit some snags (no pun intended!). I could just anticipate that with a project of this size, and not having sewn in several years, I might encounter some tricky situation that would trip me up and possibly lead me to seek professional upholstery help. In this case, it ended up being the difficulty of working with velvet, specifically mohair velvet. It turns out that velvet tends to "run away from" the needle.
I was sewing a pillow that had one panel of mohair velvet and one panel of wool plaid (a two-sided pillow.) Despite cutting the plaid and velvet to exactly the same size, on the first two pillows I made, I would end up with an extra inch to two inches of plaid after sewing all the way down one side of the pillow. It was driving me crazy.
On the third pillow, I thought, "why don't I try cutting the velvet bigger since the sewing machine seems to eat it?" This time, I ended up with like two inches extra of velvet. I would have gone insane, had I not already witnessed the beauty of inside-out sewing on the first two of these pillows that I had already sewn and stuffed: even if your pillow cover looks embarassingly crappy on the inside, when you turn it rightside-out and stuff a pillow into it, nobody will ever know! I imagine there are some limitations to this rule, but I really put it to the test and my pillows turned out looking fine.
Check out how well they turned out (if I do say so myself!) I made the plaid ones and the chain link ones. (The red velvet ones I bought since I happened to find them at a sample sale and they were the perfect color.) This is totally our new hangout spot in the house!
Next project: sewing four more pillows for our living room sofas, this time with zippers and in-seam brush fringe. Cross your fingers!
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