DIY Pillow Covers

DIY Pillow Covers: simple to make and store, no zipper, envelope style pillow cover made from inexpensive fabric remnants.

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• Materials:
• How To Make Envelope Style DIY Pillow Covers
• Leaf Accent Pillow

I am obsessed with enjoy a little seasonal decorating. But my husband may or may not have banned me from buying anymore decorative pillows. I wanted to add some fall colours to the basement this year, and decided to recover my existing pillows with some inexpensive and easy DIY pillow covers.

Our colour scheme in the basement is brown and turquoise, and I wanted to change it to orange for fall.

When I was decorating the basement a few years ago, I made sure that all the biggies in the room were neutral. The only turquoise really were the throw pillows, some candles and other little accent pieces. I love the fact that it really doesn't take too much of an accent colour to really make an impact.

So...I decided to switch it all out for orange this fall. I planned on hitting the thrift stores and grabbing some old wool sweaters to felt and maybe some tweed and corduroy to piece together some cool pillows. At the thrift store though, one orange wool sweater was $10. Too much for me, since I needed several. I decided to check out the fabric store. There I found lots of great options that were really inexpensive.

I headed back to the clearance section, at the back of the store and lots of good options. I think maybe it was because oranges sometimes end up in clearance? There was lots to choose from.

It was easy too, because oranges and browns don't all have to match exactly, unlike say reds. So I mixed and matched my way to a combination that I liked. It doesn't take much fabric to sew a pillow cover so I bought pieces that were a ½ meter, which made the orange paisley that was regularly $14 a meter, on sale for $3 a meter, only $1.50 for a ½ meter. Perfect.

Materials:

• remnant and clearance fabric pieces (about ½ meter per pillow)
• sewing machine
• thread
• straight pins
• existing pillows to recover

How To Make Envelope Style DIY Pillow Covers

I used an envelope style to sew the cushion covers. I used the pillows I already owned and wrapped the fabric around them. It's really easy, just sewing straight lines and no need for zippers or even buttons. Here's how I did it.

1. Cut out a strip of fabric long enough to wrap around your pillow with some over lap.

2. Sew a hem on the one edge that will be exposed.

3. Then just lay it out inside out and sew up the two edges.  Just three straight lines to sew altogether.  Easy peasy.

4.  Now turn it outside right and put the pillow inside.  You're done.  No zipper neccesary.

This is the back of the finished pillow, with the turquoise pillow tucked inside.

Leaf Accent Pillow

I had one other little accent pillow, and decided I should do something a little special with it. Here it is before.

And here it is after.

I used the same method, but before I sewed up the edges to make the envelope of fabric, I appliqued on some simple leaves.

The edges were left rough. I like the frayed look, and it made this really easy to do. The tread to sew the veining on the leaves was white for a little contrast.  And made sure to tie off the ends on the back of the fabric so they don't come off.

I really liked how it turned out, and it too was really simple.

In the end I spent $10 -that's it, and covered 6 pillows. And, when fall is over, I can slip off the orange pillow covers and fold them up in a box until next year. I love the price of this project and how easy it is to store. Win, win.

It's starting to feel so cozy down stairs.  Check out my new fall subway art here -which is one of my favourite additions to the room for fall.

With easy and inexpensive new pillow covers, life really is a party!

You might also like our Driftwood Pumpkins here.

Also check our out DIY Copper Wreath here.

You might also enjoy our Paper Flower Pumpkin here.