The Lemon Poppy Cottage: Pillow Talk

It's another late night here at the Lemon house, so I have been working on a little pillow while I wait for Mr. Lemon to come home.

I thought I would share a tutorial. I used leftover scraps of fabric and ribbon to make this little throw pillow. You don't have to use scraps for this project- I just have a bin of ribbon cut in weird lengths that I wanted to clean out.

This project is easy but a little labor intensive- if you can sew in a straight line, then you can do this!

You will need:

A pillow form

Fabric

Sewing machine

Ribbons or trims

Thread

A gazillion pins

Measure your pillow and add a half inch on all sides for seam allowance. My pillow is 13 inches square so I cut one piece of fabric 14 inches square for the front.

For the back I want to be able to take the pillow in and out of the cover, so I will make an envelope fold. I make this cutting one piece that is 14x 10 inches and one that is 14x6. Hem one 14 inch side on both pieces. Set aside.

On the front piece, pin strips of ribbons onto the fabric. The ribbons should extend past the edges of your fabric by at least 1 inch. I pinned mine on a diagonal, but you could go straight across.

Alternate ribbons of different widths and colors- have fun with color combos. Remember you are only pinning now, so you can move things around until you have a design or pattern you like.

After you are satisfied with the pattern, and you have pinned every piece of ribbon, it's off to the sewing machine! Take your time sewing onto the ribbons. You can match your threads to each ribbon or find one that will complement all of them. Wider ribbons will need to be sewn along both edges, but thin ribbons will be fine with one line of stitching in the center. You can even use a zigzag stitch if you want. I mixed mine up and used zigzag and straight stitches and used white thread for all the ribbons. Crazy- I know! Once you have sewn all the ribbons on the front piece, set it aside.

My pillow was looking really cute so far, so I thought a ruffle would be perfect. I made a ruffle by cutting 4inch wide strips of fabric. I sewed the strips end to end to make one very long strip then ironed a crease to make the pieces 2 inches wide. Set aside.

Now it's time for the back. Lay the 14x10 piece right-side down with the raw edge touching the left raw edge of the front piece, and then put the 14x6 piece (right-side down) on the right. You should have an overlap. I ran the overlap sections on either side through the sewing machine just so I don't go crazy when pinning all the parts together.

Next I pinned my ruffle onto the back, putting all the raw edges facing the same way. I sewed these two portions together so I wouldn't have to remove my pins, but you can just sew once if you would like.