Tutorial - Making a decorative pillow cover

I wanted to make a new throw pillow for the couch. Besides, it would be good to practice zippers and whatnot.

Finding the fabric -

Just down the street from me is an awesome home goods discount store. I am in there every other week or so to check out the new items, and see what has been discounted even more and is on the clearance rack. I found these great textured dinner napkins. They are polyester, so I know they would hold up well. And they are even a bit shiny, so I thought they would work and look nice. They were $2 each.

They are multi-toned brown napkins, 18 inches square. A perfect fit for the 18 inch pillow form I had.

The first step was attaching the zipper. I have a cat and dog, so I wanted to make sure I'd be able to wash the cover after they dirty it up, and I know they have plans already to dirty it up.

First, place the two wrong sides together, and sew one side with a 5/8 inch allowance, give or take. You will want to make "regular" stitches (& backstitch) on each end, but in between, open up the stitch length. This is just temporary. This is where your zipper will go.

Press your seem after sewing, and pin in your zipper, making sure you place the zipper teeth exactly on top of your temporary seam.

Stitch your zipper in place.

Once the zipper is in, feel free to remove your temporary stitches. Your zipper is done.

Next, unzip about halfway, and place the sides of your pillow cover wrong sides together.

Sew around the remaining three sides, making sure your stitches meet the zipper seam stitches.

You are done. It's easy. Turn right side out and insert your pillow form.

What to do with...

Cat in the Hat Sheets!

I found these at a local thrift store, and couldn't resist. But I don't know what to do with them. I have both the top and fitted sheet, but no pillowcases. They are a bit on the thin side, that's why you can see some phantom images on the photo above. But they are otherwise in good shape.

I'm back...And holiday gifts

As far as my crafting skills are concerned, I think I've come a long way in the past few months. To celebrate, I'm going to keep up with my blog.

First things first, I've starting machine sewing. And I think my items are good enough to sell. And lucky enough, other people agree. I even started a etsy site at www.brooklynbelinda.etsy.com. I make a bunch of totes and bags, recycling and reusing material whenever I can. I find that placemats and non-terry kitchen towels make awesome bags. The colors and graphics are great too.

I've also started getting in to jewelry making. I've been on the lookout for recycle/reuse material that I can remake in to jewelry too.

As I feel pretty comfortable sewing, I was able to make my mom a

purse as a holiday gift. She wanted something out of this brown corduroy fabric. That's the only guidance I had. The rest was a surprise. I think it came out really nice, and almost wish I kept this one for myself...

I appliqued the flowers onto the corduroy, and used buttons as the center of the flowers.

Here are a few more shots:

Closeup of a flower on the outside.

Inside of the bag...I used a magnetic closure and there is an internal pocket.

And speaking of gifts, I made this necklace for another family member.

It's layered Mother of Pearl on a simple silver chain.