Pillow Talk

I couldn't decide how to title this post "Pillow Talk"? or "The most ground breaking, spiritually invigorating and full of depth post yet". It was a real toss up.

Last fall I started a project. Last night I completed it. I was most of the way done back in April when my friend Laura took these photos. 

I loved the way the room looked but a) the curtains weren't hung and b) I was missing a few big statement pillows, per Nancy's suggestion. We'll the curtains went up months ago but the pillows remained unfinished. The bed still looked great, the pillows I had on hand were lovely!

Lovely AND inexpensive! The front three personalized pillows were from Pick Your Plum. I just needed to insert a pillow form into them. They were the most expensive part of this overhaul, purchased exactly one year ago, for $43.96. 

Then came the two grey pillows in the back - they are placemats from Superstore - coming in at a whopping $3 dollars each plus stuffing (roughly $5 to stuff both), they were super easy to turn into pillows and I loved what they added. 

But something Nancy had suggested kept sticking out to me - there needed to be bigger "anchor" pillows, to help balance the bed out. These pillows were all on the small side. When Nancy was here we searched high and love. Pillows are expensive y'all! We kept finding ones that were close (though not perfect) and none of them cost less than $30 each, usually way more. I was discouraged. Then we headed to Crate & Barrel where we found a bunch of other cool stuff...no perfect pillows BUT I noticed a cheerful material sticking out of a bucket. A dinner napkin. Hmmm. Could this be my new pillow? I bought 6 napkins at 5.95 each and headed home. Then I proceeded to do nothing about it. A while later I tried to sew them and couldn't thread my machine. 

Finally last week I had my friend Judy over for a sewing / threading lesson and BAM, my pillows were taking shape! I only had time to finish one last week and I left it in the living room and people were constantly holding it and hugging it. It seemed like a hit. 

Sewing them was really easy once I could thread my machine (of course). I took two sides and pinned them together inside out. Then I sewed 85% of the way around them leaving a space for stuffing. Once they were sewed I stuffed them, then hand stitched the entrance closed. The tension is making sure the whole is big enough for your hand and stuffing to fit in, but not so big that the unsightly hand stitch marks will be obvious. 

Finally last night I finished sewing and stuffing the other two (as well as sewing up four more pillows for the living room - though I ran out of batting for those) and ran upstairs to see how it looked together. AMAZING. I was so happy. 

Paul: "Explain to me why our bed needed more pillows?"
Tara: "It looks better" 
Paul: "It looks harder to make the bed"
Tara: "Do you hate them?"
Paul: "No, not hate"

And that's a win in our house. 

Considering I used 3/4's of a $20 bag of batting to fill the three pillows, plus the cost of the napkins ($5.95 for each side), we are coming in at $50 for the three pillows. Bringing us to a total cost of $105 for all 8 pillows. While $105 seems like a lot - to purchase similar pillows at Target or HomeSense ranged from $15 a pillow to $35, assuming we spent an average of $20 a pillow it would have cost us $160 at least. I'll consider it a win, especially purchased over a year.