Love Love Love Burlap

Have I mentioned I love burlap? :) Have you ever worked with it? Ok, it's not my favorite to sew with, but man is it cheap! And so so cute!

I've been meaning to make some pillows for my never-ending-bedroom-makeover and finally got around to it the other day. A few months ago I made a bed skirt out of some fabric I found that had every color I wanted in my room. My dressers are a light light green:

so that's always been a bit hard to match things too. Note to self: always choose fabrics before paints!!

...Anyway, I used burlap and a little bit of the fabric from my bed skirt that I had left over. I had this random idea to make it look like a present so here's what I ended up with...

How to:

1. Cut fabric to fit pillow (my pillow was 18in x 18in so I cut my burlap 19in x 19 in). Remember your seams will take up about 1" if you do 1/2" seam on each side.

*I wanted this pillow to be super quick and easy to make so instead of using a zipper I just cut the fabric for the back of the pillow in 2 pieces and overlapped them so you could still be able to remove the cover to wash. Does that make sense? So for the back piece I cut one piece 10in and another piece 14in (leaving 6 inches to overlap).

2. On your back piece fold over the edges about 1/2in and sew. You can iron it to make it easier and more even to sew, but I just did mine super fast and didn't worry about it...

 This is what the two back pieces end up looking like...

 3. Sew the two back pieces together, just where they overlap about 1" long and 1/4" seam - basically just to keep them in place. You don't have to do this, but I thought it was easier.

4. Pin the back and front of your case together...

 5. Sew around the edges, 1/2" seam.

6. My mom taught me a cool trick- which, if you do a lot of sewing I'm sure you already know- when you're done sewing cut all the corners off to give you a cleaner corner once you turn your pillow right side out.

 7. Turn your pillow right side out and iron if necessary.

 8. Place your pillow inside the case

9. Grab your twine and wrap your present pillow :) . This is what I used, I bought it at Hobby Lobby, but you can get it anywhere... 

(I used the bottom one because it was thicker)

10. I tied a good knot, cut the strings and then added my circle flower thingy on top, but you can decorate it however you want...

 *For the top piece: 

1. All I did was take the fabric I used for my bed skirt and cut circles (not perfect), and then took my burlap and cut other circles to go in between them. Layer the circles and sew the center by bunching it with your fingers a little. You can do this by hand, or what I did was fold my layers of circles in half and run it through my machine a few stitches (since I was too lazy to do it by hand!).

 2. Attach your circle layer thingy decorative piece to your twine by needle and thread

3. Attach a button, or I knotted my twine twice and hot glued it to the circles.

Done! ...

This pillow turned out to be sooo fast and easy!

 My bed is still in need of a few more pillows, but those might have to wait for a bit- I've got Christmas things to worry about! :) ... Including burlap stockings I'm working on! I'm so excited about them! I'll post as soon as they're done!