Piping Pillows!

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Rachel Gillen

I finally learned how to do piping! And I’m absolutely loving it! I’ve been wanting to publish this blog post for a while, but I wanted to surprise my mom more with her new throw pillows!

The piping isn’t THAT difficult, I think it just took some trial and error and figuring out what works best.

I don’t have a “zipper foot” on my sewing machine but I can get the needle to move to the left of center a little and that’s what I did.

First I’ll start with the pillows. I bought two 16×16 pillow forms and 4 different fabrics, 1yd each. Which turned out to be too much but I think I can squeeze two more pillows out of the leftover fabric.

I decided to fancy them up a bit and use more than one fabric. I cut three pieces for the front of the pillow in alternating patterns.

17×3
17×7
17×8

Total size is 17×18, but once you factor in the extra inch for the two seams it ends up being about 17×17.

For the back, I made them envelope style and cut two pieces, a top and bottom envelope piece, both the same size.

17×13
17×13

I factored in an inch for the hem on each piece, then 7″ overlap on the envelope part. (I’ve done less overlap in the past but I didn’t want the pillow peeking out at all.)

So I sewed the front pieces together then I hemmed the back pieces. Then it was time for the piping!

I bought 1/4″ piping in a package. I cut bias strips of fabric to cover it. (This just means to cut the strips on a diagonal, so the fabric has a little more stretch to it.

Then I sewed the bias strips together to make one long strip, longer than I needed to go around the whole pillow.

Once I got that ready, I laid the piping inside and folded it up and pinned it in place. Then I sewed down the side of the piping.

I found it helped to push the piping against my fingers to keep it straight.

After that was ready to go, I pinned it to the front part of my pillow cover. The pillow cover should be right side up, with the piping laying on top with the open edge of fabric along the edge of the pillow cover. I pinned that down.

Around the corners I cut little slits to allow the piping to bend and still lay somewhat flat.

Then I sewed all around. I started a couple inches from the beginning of the piping to give myself room to tuck in the other end, to make it look continuous.

After I had the piping attached to the front of the pillow cover, I laid the back pieces face down on top, pinned them in place, then sewed all around that, finishing it up. Easy peasy!

After those, I made Christmas pillow covers for us.

Don’t mind Charlie in the background please!

Happy New Year!

DIY Pillow Covers: Round 2

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Rachel Gillen

I’ve kind of fallen in love with making covers for my throw pillows… It’s just such an easy way to change up the look and feel of our living room… Since our house is 43′ long and 8.5′ wide and has wheels, customizing is at SOMEWHAT of a minimum.

It might be a little early for fall colors, and I think I’ll change them back for the next week or so, or at least until Labor Day, but I couldn’t resist making these once I had the fabric! I found it at JoAnn’s on clearance….

Adorbs! (Allen: if you’re reading this, that means adorable) 😉

It’s fall-ish and puppy-ish, not to mention glittery! (You can’t really see that from the photo…)

So, I had to make them. The last ones I made, and what I’m going to go back to at least until Tuesday are plain turquoise.

And the DIY for those is here.

But now that my sewing is getting a little better, and this fabric shows a little more what I was doing, I thought I’d post it again.

You’ll need:

Fabric
Scissors
Pins
Thread
Sewing machine
A measuring tape

I made a 12×16″ and a 16×16″ envelope style cover for pillows that came with Allen (brown and dark blue).

For the 16×16″… I cut the fabric to 17″x36″ (I added 1/2″ on each side for the seams then 3″ for the overlap/envelope).

I sewed a 1/2″ hem on both short ends.

Then I folded it, right sides together, in almost thirds, overlapping the ends, to make the entire size 16″x16″.

Then I pinned it in place on the overlap. Then I sewed each edge.

Next, flip it right-side-out. And stuff the pillow in!

I really want to try this next:

But it looks a LITTLE more difficult!

Image Transfer DIY

Posted on August 4, 2015 by Rachel Gillen

Yesterday when I got lost in the endless Pinterest maze, I was actually looking for a way to transfer an image onto fabric. Since I made my pillow covers, I’ve been thinking they looked a little plain. I found a solution (I think!)

I still want to add to this but, now I know how to do it! It’s super easy! You need:

A printer
Wax paper
Scissors
Fabric

That’s it!

Remember everything will transfer in reverse. Good thing this was a test on scrap fabric!

Word… And my Sutro coffee cup…

I chose my image and put it into Word. Then I cut a piece of wax paper to around 8.5″X11″. I had to finagle it a little to get it into the printer. I wound up sticking it between two sheets of regular paper then pulling the top piece out. Hit PRINT. Then put the ink side down onto your fabric and rub, make sure it doesn’t move or it will smear. And don’t touch the image on the wax paper because the ink is wet. Voilà!

I need to figure out what else I’m going to put on this pillow cover because the chair turned out pretty small in comparison.

The chair is a drawing I did when we finally had to get rid of the original. It was around 13years old and it finally gave out in Oklahoma City. We definitely got a lot of use out of it!

I just hung up these two guys this past weekend. The top one was a DIY I made for Allen’s birthday present. We picked up some Command damage-free picture hanging strips. They are kind of like Velcro but they snap together. I love all the Command products!

With a camper, space is limited so the more you things you can hang and keep out of the way, the better… But you can’t really put nails in the wall, and the studs are never where you need them to be. I still wanted to hang some things to make it more “ours”… They are holding so far! Here are some more Command products currently in use: