LINEN PILLOWS

We've been in need of some throw pillows for our couches for a VERY long time.  I had three requirements for these pillows: 1. They had to be a bold color.  I play it safe with color most of the time, so most of our house is very neutral.  I feel like pillows are easily replaced, and therefore a safe place to put in color.  2.  They could not be boring.  I don't know why, but I just have this thing against a pillow with no pattern or motif or something to make it special.  Just a personal preference I guess.  3.  It had to have some brown in it.  We bought these (rather expensive) leather couches when we first moved into our home.  In the showroom they were the perfect shade of chocolate brown.  Of course, the couches that showed up were more like a dark chocolate brown.  If you don't know they're brown, they look black.  The store was not very sympathetic - different dye lots, blah, blah, blah.   In an attempt to help the eye see brown couches, and not black ones, I wanted to make sure the pillows had brown in them. 

So off to the fabric store I went, and I found these red and white linen fabrics that I loved.  Then I was inspired by the hand painted linen towels on jennysteffens.blogspot.com.  It's a great tutorial, and was the perfect solution for adding brown into the pillows. 

Last week I shared with you my secret about frames.  Well, here is my secret about pillows - I never buy new pillow forms.  As with frames, thrift stores always have shelves full of pillows for $2-3 each.  If you were to take all the pillow covers off of my pillows, you would have the world's ugliest collection of pillows!  But unless you read this post, you'd never guess.  Because I use old pillows, I line the pillow cover with quilt batting, which smooths out any little lumps or bumps. 

Resources: jennysteffens.blogspot.com 
Skills required: easy machine sewing
Approximate time to craft*: 2 hours each
Approximate cost for supplies*: $5 each
*Please remember that these are just approximations. CopyCrafts makes no guarantee of their accuracy.