napkin pillow

I showed off our living room a few weeks ago.  It’s okay.  I mean, it’s comfortable and big and we spend lots of our time here.  But it could use some color…  (and some curtains!)

A few weeks ago, we went on a (very unsuccessful) shower-curtain finding mission.  As I became more desperate to find ANYTHING that MIGHT work in our full bath (more on this later this week), I got more and more creative about my approach.  Basically, anything that was 70″ x 84″ was good enough.  Which brought me to the tableware section of World Market, where I didn’t find anything shower curtain worthy, but I did find this napkin:

I loved the color, cheery design, and $1.50 price tag, and decided this would be (one of many) pops of color that our drab living room needs.

I used a 12″ x 12″ pillow form that I already had, and some neutral fabric leftover from my bedroom curtains made the perfect pillow back.  I cut the napkin to a 12″ x 12″ square, and the cut two neutral rectangles that were 12″ long and had a combined width of ~15″.  I laid out the two neutral rectangles so that they’d overlap by about 3″ like so:

Then, I laid the napkin on top of the neutral fabric, making sure the front sides of the fabric met, and pinned.

After sewing and turning the fabric inside out, I put the pillow form in its new case.  The new pillow has an overlapping fabric on the back side that I could attach velcro to if I desired, but the pillow fits nicely without the fabric gaping, so I’ll skip it for now.

I should say that this is the first time I’ve put a pillow together like this – with the opening in the back, but I’m kind of thrilled with how well it turned out.  I’ll be able to remove the pillow case and wash it easily… or I can switch it out when I’m ready to look at something new.

But I don’t think I’ll be ready to look at anything new for a while.  I’m pretty pleased with this little pop of color!  (Also? Am totally pleased with its $1.50 price tag!)

PS Can you spot the Barley ears in 2 of the above photos?