"New" Pillows Re-fashioned and Re-styled

I've been re-designing a bit in my own home. I love the challenge of exercising my creativity and re-decorating on a dime. It's year round but seems to really peak every January, when our budget is still feeling the pinch of Christmas. This year though, when my husband gives me one of his crooked grins because I am sewing and painting and pushing all the furniture around, it's better. Now I can protest:

"Honey! It's for my business! I HAVE to practice what I preach, right?!"

He's on to me, but sweet about it. After 22 years, he knows how I get!

I'm not making huge changes, just freshening up a bit. I've always kept a fairly neutral palette in our living room, lots of creams and browns with touches of warm fall colors. Here is a "before" from a year or two ago...

This color scheme is calming and soothing and that is necessary when you have three teenage sons! Yet lately, I've been craving a little bit of cheerful in the midst of all my safe, quiet color. The very BEST thing about having neutral walls and furniture is that you can get yourself a whole new look very inexpensively, just by changing out a few pillows and accessories.
I considered a bright apple green, tried out a bit of turquoise...but it was all in vain.

For I always come back to my favorite color...bright, warm, wonderful...RED.

The wall behind our couch has a huge design flaw. The builders who added the living room on? Put the electric breaker box in THE MIDDLE OF THE WALL. And its huge! So, my solution is that quilt hanging there. It covers it nicely, but would have to be the first thing to change for a new color scheme. When I found a Ralph Lauren striped quilt on clearance at Kohl's, it solidified my decision to go red.

The pillows were much harder. I couldn't find any red ones I liked! If your pillows are merely decorative than you can find lots of great options at TJMaxx, Target, Fred Meyer even. But we actually USE our pillows. Every night there is a lanky boy (or a short Mama) stretched out on that couch, so it's made me kind of a pillow snob.
I want down filled, and the plumper the better!

I decided to simply recover the pillows we already had. Yet the only fabric I found that I even liked? Was $48 per yard, special order! Ouch. Really, I am not that picky normally, but this would be one of the only patterns in the room, and set the tone for everything else. It mattered, but not $48 times two yards, mattered!

Would you like to listen in to my thought process in choosing a fabric for pillows? I'll share it knowing there are two camps. You will either think "That makes total sense." or "Sheesh, lady, get a life!"

I wanted fabric with a warm, tomato-y red, not anything close to pink, maroon or burgundy...
a tan or cream background but not white...
and not too stiff of a material, for we lay on it...
but sturdy enough that a boy throwing it won't get beaten...
fabric needs to be washable. and color-fast...
and a pattern, certainly, to play off the stripe in the quilt...
but a pattern that was vintage enough in style to go with my current stuff...
but not a grandma-ish pattern, meaning no chintz or calico or anything fussy...
no plaid, we want to avoid a Log Cabin look...
and most of all...cost. I was looking for CHEAP. not even frugal. cheap.

I looked everywhere. I even looked at plus-size clothing at the Goodwill, thinking I could cut 2-3 pillows out of a skirt or dress, if I found the right one!
No luck. Then, I saw these drapes at Target:

 

Only $19 a panel, and I had a $10 gift card burning a hole in my wallet. For $9, I got 54 x 84 inches of high quality, heavy duty home decorators fabric. Considering that the least expensive yard (36 inches) of home dec fabric at Joann's was $25? I was pretty happy!

I wanted piping in a contrasting fabric so I bought 1/2 a yard of black calico for $1.50 (with teensy little polka dots on them that make me silly-happy) and 10 yards of cording ($2.34)

 

I've never made my own piping, and the boys thought my "pirate noises" as I sewed were funny (aarrgghhh!) but it turned out pretty cute! I used a tutorial found on Pinterest from the sewmamasew blog.

 

 

 When finished:

I certainly don't sew well enough to make things for clients (and I don't think I could charge enough to make the aggravation worth it! haha!) but I am tickled with how they turned out, and how the red adds some much needed spice to my plain couch. Most of all, I love that they aren't from Pottery Barn or Pier One. No one has in the world  has"my" pillows! (yet. maybe this blog post will go viral and everyone will start hacking up Target drapes now?)

When you are looking for that one thing to complete a room, take your time. Pass up the "Well. it would work, but I don't love it.." things you do find and wait for the just-right fabric or art to come along. Keep your eyes open, and look at everything, everywhere you go, with possibility. Then, when you find it, even if you have to cut up a perfectly good curtain and learn how to sew bias tape piping yourself? Do it.

(and if you'd like that attention to detail but don't want to do it yourself? My consult page is right below the header! I will be that nerdy and distracted, for you)