pillow covers

I am finishing a pair of pillow covers, and think they're going to be very nice! A pair of pillows came with my new sofa, and they are a great size and very comfortable. However, they are really ugly and not washable, so I measured them carefully, got out the wonderful stack of stencils I have tucked away, and designed covers. Each side of each pillow will have white fabric stitched with a brightly colored thread in an ornate whole-cloth style pattern. The patterns are all different, of course, as are the thread colors. I am using bias binding tape to edge each piece, and will stitch together three sides and add a matching zipper to the fourth side. One pillow will have burnt red edging, and the other hunter green since I had that bias tape on hand and even had matching zippers -- I suspect that stuff came from my late mother's miscellaneous sewing stuff. Anyhow, the sofa will certainly look nicer with those ugly pillows covered! I do a fair amount of whole-cloth quilting using colored threads, and always make a pillow cover to test out thread colors, since some look great and others pretty miserable and a sample is really the only way to know for sure. And I have found it uses up some of the fairly unattractive cotton fabrics to use them for the inside of pillow covers. By next week the sofa will look pretty good!

Reply to
Mary
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Reply to
nzlstar*

I don't do any work with a sewing machine, and prefer to do hand work for everything. Fortunately, speed is not an issue! I have my grandmother's treadle sewing machine, but at the moment it has a stack of "gotta read someday" magazines sitting on top! I like having zippered pillow covers since I do get two sides and can flip them over now and then, and it only takes one extra seam to put in a zipper. Pillow covers are a great way to test out thread, fabric, and technique -- if I like it, that's great, and it may sooner or later wind up in a quilt. If not, it's just one side of a pillow cover and is finished soon. I have found that different colors of threads actually handle differently, even those of the same brand, and that each one looks different when actually used, too, so it's really important to me to make sure it's something good before I invest a lot of time in a quilt. (One gold thread looked great on the spool, but was simply miserable when used with whole-cloth work; a dark blue thread looked black when used; and black thread, which I never expected to work well, came out simply beautifully. Go figure!) The "test" pillows are tucked here and there around the house -- primarily in the guest rooms, but a few are in the living room. Best of all, every one of those covers can be removed from the pillows, tossed in the washer and dryer, and put back fresh and clean!

Reply to
Mary

Photos please! I'm trying hard to visualize this, and I can't. Not unusual, I'm horrible at visualizing from discriptions. I desperately want to see what you're talking about. I think it must be gorgeous. Warning, I'm a terrible copycat and if I like it and can do it (not a given) then I might end up making a pillow in tribute to yours.

Sunny

Reply to
Sunny

I'm actually making 4 small quilts, each 14" by 18". Each one is white fabric stitched with a brightly colored thread in a stenciled pattern I drew on with plain old No. 2 pencil (which washes out later). It's whole-cloth quilting with color. (Traditional whole cloth quilts are done in white thread on white fabric.) Each small quilt is bound (edged) with bias binding tape ( the commercially made stuff). Two are bound in hunter green, and will be sewn together on the edges on 3 sides, and a zipper added on the 4th side, also in hunter green. The other two are edged in a burnt red, and will have a matching zipper. All of the small quilts are different in pattern and in thread color, so the pillows will each have two sides to choose which to show. They're really very simple to make, and a great way to learn whole-cloth quilting -- why commit yourself to an entire quilt until you know you like the technique and like the result?

Reply to
Mary

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