New Dog, New Pillows

Meet Linus. He came to live with our family over Christmas and we've quickly fallen in love with him.

His brother, Wooly, lived with a really nice guy in our last building. We were always so impressed with Wooly and how he interacted with our girls. We reached out to the woman that once owned Wooly and more than a year later, right before Christmas, she emailed us asking if we had a home for Wooly's brother whom she no longer had space for.

He's two years old, but his soul is much older. His eyes are soft and kind, and he's as gentle as can be - a giant teddy bear, really. Did I mention we are in love with him? We are. Evie cried and cried when we dropped him off at the boarders before our trip to Arizona. And the reunion we had with him today was just unbelievably sweet. I think Linus likes being in our family too.

Before we met him for the first time, we were going through books to find the perfect name for a French standard poodle (Hugo and Sebastian were in the running), just in case. His former owner introduced us to him as Linus, and Michael and I both threw our hands up in the air. Linus! Isn't that just the perfect name for him? Such a sweetie.

PS Those are my new silk pillows in the background here. Only $20 from West Elm! They are so lovely in person. I think the bits of apricot in the pattern are pretty on my green sofa.

Also, thank you again for your support with the Homies. I hate to ask for your vote, but it means a lot to me and for the traffic of this little blog if I can make it into the next round. Thanks so, SO much! xo

Easy Envelope Pillows

Did I tell you I finished reupholstering the black and white settee? I love it. The pillows are recent additions too that I whipped together at the same time, while I had the sewing machine out.

I used this silk watercolor fabric from the Brunschwig sample sale that I scored for $3 and the fabric from the other pillow was seen here. I love how they look together above!

Because I'm not the hugest fan of sewing in zippers, over the years I've come close to perfecting the art of the 10-minute envelope pillow. It's so easy! If you know how to sew a straight line, you can make this pillow fast. Here's the down and dirty:

1) For a standard 20" pillow (which works great with these $7 down inserts from IKEA, or these $14 favorites from Crate and Barrel), cut out a 20x44" piece of fabric. I cut out two pieces so I could make a pair of pillows easily at the same time.

2) On just the 20" wide ends, fold over the fabric about 1/2" and iron down. If you want to prevent any chance of messy-looking fringing, where your threads start pulling out, you can roll under the edge a little or you can serge or use a zigzag stich to bind the edges. It's not a necessary step though.

2) Sew a line down your pressed edge. (Both edges)

3) Now that both the top and bottom edges are sewn, fold your fabric like an envelope. Note that your fabric should be right-side in.

The total length of the envelope should be 19". I always sew my pillows to be an inch shorter than my insert size. I like my covers a little more taut than baggy.

4) Put in a couple straight pins to keep all the layers in place. To make it really easy to pull the pins while you're sewing always place them so the head is nearest the edge.

5) Sew a line down both edges and then snip off the fabric behind the seam on the very corners. This prevents bunching.

6) Home stretch!! Just flip the pillow right-side out and then press everything down.

I made five pillows in less than an hour for the shoot. If you're making one - you might as well make five! :)

Pretty photos taken by Nicole Franzen, styled by Kendra Smoot.

Marimekko Pillows

A few of you asked about the fabric on my hot pink pillows (seen here).

I pulled one of my favorite tricks here and used standard bed pillow cases to make pillow covers. These were Marimekko shams from the clearance aisle at HomeGoods.

Just use three of the already finished edges and then add your own zipper on the fourth (bottom) edge. Sometimes you can get two pillows out of one king-sized sham! These two pillows ended up costing me about $7 total, including the two zippers, and only took a few minutes at the sewing machine to finish.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend! And if you're celebrating, I hope it's a very happy Easter or Passover for you and your family!

xx

Vintage Scarf Pillow

Last weekend I found this amazing vintage Gucci silk scarf at the flea market. It had been ingeniously sewn into a pillow.

I am so inspired by the way they folded up the corners and sewed in a zipper diagonally. SO great, right?

The colors in the pattern are so incredible in person, and of course I love the drafting tools!

I want to pick up another pretty vintage scarf or two and try to make a pillow in the same way. I did a round up of some pretty scarves on etsy that caught my eye. Check them out here.

(PS Please send happy thoughts my way! Today we're flying to Hawaii with SEVEN kids under the age of six. Heaven help us, and grant our fellow passengers plenty of patience (and good noise-canceling headphones!).

Pillows with Stripes on the Bias

My beautiful and talented friend Shanna used this $5 cushion cover from the As-Is bin at IKEA to sew her own chevron pillow. She used this tutorial as a reference.

We all know you can buy chevron fabric, but I really relate to the satisfaction that comes with taking on creative endeavors. Guaranteed Shanna will love this pillow longer than if she had purchased the twinkle living pillow or used the Premier Prints fabric. Plus, I love the chunkier scale of the chevron pattern here and I think the quilted/pieced look is fun - looks more like darts or arrows.

There are so many fun ways to piece together striped fabric on the bias. It reminds me of Windsor Smith's chair in House Beautiful,

and this photo from Nicole's blog:

Have a great weekend! Go make something!
xx