I know, I know… I make a lot of pillows. Truth is, pillows are so much cheaper to make than they are to buy, even from discount stores. I made these five for the same amount as one might cost.
This time around, I made a few for our family room, which was in need of a spruce up. A couple of pillows came with our new couch (in a fabric I chose), so I wanted everything to coordinate with them (in that non-matchy-matchy way, of course).
After collecting up some bargain fabric from different sources, I started with a couple of long and skinny pillows to go along the arms of the couch. I found this tan and teal zebra print that I would have normally rejected out of hand. I’m not really an animal print sort of girl, but that day it caught my eye. I carted it around the store, and it grew on me. The large-scale pattern in altered colors looks fresh and modern to me. Those two skinny pillows only used half of the yard I had, so I made a square one too.
I knew I wanted to inject some shots of golden yellow in the room. I had been hunting for some velvet or corduroy, but couldn’t find anything in that color. Randomly, I ran across a half-yard drapery remnant in a sort of fuzzy textured microfiber. It had a rubbery lining on the back, but I didn’t have any problems sewing through it.
Digging around at Jo-Ann, I found some discontinued samples and almost passed them over. But they were marked down to $1 each, and they were already the perfect size for a pillow.
And here’s the breakdown for five under fifteen:
$3.00…..Teal/tan zebra patterned fabric, 1 yd @ $3/yd.
$2.00…..Light aqua fabric, two 18″x18″ discontinued samples @ $1 each
$1.78…..Gold drapery remnant, just under half a yard @ $4/yd.
$2.83…..3 packs teal piping for zebra pillows
$4.58…..2 zippers (I was just messing around with zippers on the long zebra pillows.)
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$14.19…..Total (Yeah, it would have been less than $10 without my zipper experimentation.)
Just to let you know, these are not one-time-only deals on fabric. These kind of bargains can be had any day of the week, if you look for them. You can make bargain pillows too! If anyone is interested, just let me know and we’ll go bargain fabric shopping!
Where’s the line item for the pillow stuffing? I re-used stuffing from old throw pillows I already had. I wouldn’t do this if I were making them for someone else. But if you’ve got old pillows that are clean, there’s no harm in re-using the stuffing for new pillows. No waste, no money spent. But if you don’t have old pillows to poach from, new Poly-fil would cost approximately $2.50 per pillow.
