faux fur pillow covers

One of the quickest & most surefire ways to update your decor each season is switching up your decorative pillows. And I love fall inspired pillow covers. But I always run into the problem of having expensive taste & an unwillingness to fork over much money at all, especially if I think I can make it myself.

This season, I found myself longing for these faux fur pillow covers from Pottery Barn.

However, the PB version is forty bucks a pop! Ouch.

So instead, I made some & I was able to make multiple pillow covers in different faux furs for the price of one Pottery Barn cover.

And with a little gumption & know-how, you can too!

1.
Buy some faux fur.

I found several different faux fur throws at TJ Maxx for $19 each.

 2.
Measure the pillows you are covering.

Mine were 18", which is a pretty common pillow size.

3.
Cut your fabric.

To do an envelope-style pillow cover, you will cut one front piece & two back pieces. If your pillow is 18" x 18", you can just use the numbers I used...they are in bold below.

For the front piece, add an inch to the measurements of your pillow (since mine was an 18" pillow, my front piece was 19" x 19"). This will give you a 1/2" seam allowance. For the back pieces, divide the pillow measurement by 2 & add 4" (so I did 18" divided by 2 = 9" plus 4" = 13". Thus my back pieces were 19" x 13"). These pieces will overlap in the back of the pillow case to give you a place to insert your pillow. To cut my pieces, I used a cutting mat, rotary cutter & clear acrylic quilting ruler. This was definitely a helpful piece of equipment to have. My fur was sort of stretchy & it would have been difficult to get a straight cut with scissors. But do whatever works best for you.

4.
Hem the back pieces.

To do this, fold over the fabric of one of the 19" sides about 3/4" & sew across with the longest stitch on your machine. I used a walking presser foot for all the sewing, which helped feed the material evenly & keep it from slipping.

5.
Sew the 3 pieces together.


Now it is time to pin the pieces together. Lay the front piece the "right" side facing up. Lay one back piece on top of this with the "wrong" side facing up & the hemmed 19" edge toward the center. Pin the fabric in place along the raw 19". Sew this with a 1/2" seam allowance. Do the same with the other back piece. This should give you one long piece of 19" wide fabric, hemmed on either end.

Fold the back pieces onto the front piece so the "right sides face each other. Pin along the unsewn edges. Sew with a 1/2" seam.


6.
Insert your pillow & enjoy!

all hallows' eve

Just thought I'd pop in to show a few pictures of my house, all dressed up for the holidays. On October 1st, I went into a decorating/crafting frenzy that lasted for three days (although crafts & decorating has continued through the month). It was fueled by lots of pumpkin bread, pandora "Halloween Party" radio and classic Halloween movies. We went from having about 3 decorations to having a house full, which is just as I like it, especially since October is possibly my favorite month of the year!

Upon approaching our house, you are greeted with this wreath...please ignore the craziness of our front door. It is about to be repainted. Hopefully tomorrow. This was once one of those twig wreaths. But I covered it with torn up drop cloth & some book page scrolls. And a skeleton hand for good measure.

This is our entryway. I made the Happy Halloween banner last year using a drop cloth, a sharpie & some coffee to give it an aged look. The candles on the left are black tapers from Hobby Lobby placed in wine bottles spray painted matte black. I've used these several places in the house.

The pillows throughout the house were all crafted by me. I LOVE having a sewing machine :) The designs on all the light-colored pillows were drawn with sharpie & a careful hand. Making the pillows was definitely one of my favorite parts of crafting this year. The skull is from Walmart. I general avoid that place (the one in our town is such a nightmare to go to), but they have some great, cheap Halloween decor. And I feel like even something small, like a skull sitting on your coffee table, can do a lot for giving your home a bit of spooky Halloween spirit.

The black & orange garland hangs behind the couch with the trick or treat & nevermore pillows in the first picture. It was a pretty quick craft that I originally intended to bedeck an outdoor buffet table for a party we had a few weeks ago.

The "double, double toil & trouble" pillow is probably my favorite thing I made this year.

Our dining room is a fun hodge-podge of items. I went to several thrift stores & found lots of old silver trays to pull into my decor this year. While I was there, I spotted the candle-holder-arch-thing on the buffet hutch. I knew immediately it would be perfect somewhere in my house for Halloween. Once again you can see I have some wine bottles, one holding a candle & the others just looking pretty. I also have more bones & skulls from Walmart. Then I pulled in some pieces from TJ Maxx (white ceramic pumpkin, skull salt & pepper shakers, cake stand, glass container) & some real pumpkins & candles. The glass container on the table is actually a decanter I found at West Elm. It wasn't too expensive & it was beautiful & I knew I could use it to decorate in a lot of different ways.

This is our kitchen table. The skeleton is from Walmart...one of those 3 ft guys you see hanging in a lot of people's yards. I accidentally broke his head off & then actually liked him a lot better without a head on his shoulders, so I hot glued his skull to his hand & added some hot glue to his joints as well to keep him propped up. The bottle is another empty bottle of something intoxicating. If you don't have friends who drink, you should definitely get some if just for the cast off bottles. A lot of alcohol bottles are really pretty! And it seems like wine bottles in particular have infinite uses.

Anyway, add a couple mercury glass votives & a slab of beautiful olive wood (all from TJ Maxx over the years) & it's finished!

The thing hanging on the wall behind the table is just a roll of craft paper that says "something wicked this way comes." I originally planned to do the whole "by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes" but it was really time consuming & I wanted to move onto other projects. I intended to come back to it, but haven't yet. Anyway, to make it I googled "halloween chalkboard art" and used a couple of the results as inspiration to make a design that suited my tastes. I freehanded the design with a pencil & then traced over it in sharpie.

The final room on our Halloween home tour is the living room, aka the fireplace room. Decorating the mantle is a favorite of mine & I like to think I've gotten pretty good at it with some practice :) I always like how my mantles turn out, anyway. The mantle was pulled together from a lot of items around the house, a lot of thrift store items & some mini pumpkins. The only items I bought for this mantle specifically are the silver trays (thrifted) & the orange glass bottle on the right (TJ Maxx). I made the "all hallows' eve" banner from old book pages, a sharpie & some coffee to age it.

The skull pillow was something I had been dreaming up for a long time. I think there was a pottery barn something-or-other that had a skull print similar to this ages ago & I had always liked it. Then I decided to try my hand this year at drawing the skull. It probably would be easier to just print it onto transfer paper & iron it on, but we don't have a printer & I don't think I ever found this same skull face on. The images were always skewed or showed the skull on a plate or something.

Anyway, here are a few more random images from around the house. Hope you enjoyed the tour of our house!

erinkay