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Decorating

Six Days of Spring: Refresh Your Living Room With These Easy (Yes, Easy!) Envelope Pillows

We’re excited to feature a week’s worth of spring projects and DIYs with five other bloggers (make sure to click through on today’s projects at the bottom of this post), and today we’re showing you how to add an easy spring refresh with pillow covers. For this project, we used some Pottery Barn fabric we had purchased a few years ago. We have a lot of other great yardage choices currently available. Find them all here.


Sewing pillow covers is a great way to refresh your sofa or bed for spring. This project takes very little time once you’ve assembled your materials. (We finished it in less than half an hour.)

What You’ll Need

  • Pillow Insert
  • 1-2 yards of fabric, ironed (fabric yardage depends on the size of your pillows)
  • Sewing Machine
  • Coordinating color thread
  • Measuring Tape
  • Iron
  • Pins
  • Scissors

Here’s How to Do It

  1. First, you need to determine how much fabric you’ll need. You’ll do this by using the size of your pillow insert to calculate your mesurements. (Stick with us here, measuring is the hardest part of this entire project!)
  2. Measure the length of the shorter side. Then, measure the length of the longer side, multiple the length by two and add four to five inches for your seam allowances and overlap. I also recommend adding even more fabric for the overlap, as then there’s no danger of a particularly plump pillow opening up in the back to reveal your insert.
  3. Confused by Step 2? Here’s how that measurement looks: If you have an 18 inch square pillow, cut your fabric to 18 inches on the short side, and 40 inches on the long side (18 inches, doubled, is 36 inches, plus four inches for allowance; again, feel free to add more fabric on the long side if you want the pillow insert to be absolutely covered, as we did).
  4. To get this measurement exact, it’s easy to use kraft paper as your pattern. Just lay out your measurements on the kraft paper and cut to size. Then, lay your fabric out under your pattern and cut it out.
  5. Next, measure and iron a quarter-inch hem on both of the short sides of your fabric, with the right side of the fabric down. Then fold over each side again to a quarter inch and iron. Then pin the edges and sew these hems.
  6. Lay the fabric right side up and fold one of the sides over a little further than half way. Then fold the other side over so it overlaps over your first folded side. It should extend three or more inches over your first folded side. Next, pin and sew each of these longer sides.
  7. Turn the pillow cover you’ve just sewn inside out. Use a wooden spoon to poke out the corners. Stuff your pillow, and you’re finished!

Check out the rest of the DIYs featured today from the other participating bloggers!

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I love to make my own pillows…and making them with the envelope back you can change out the forms and only store the covers! Adore the beautiful fabric used here, looks like spring flowers!
~Pendra

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