Day 6… We are half-way through our 12 Days of Christmas Freebies!  Hope you are getting lots of sewing done this week! How about a fun gift idea for friends and family who love to decorate?  Okay… or maybe this one’s for you! 😉  Throw pillows are so pretty and fun to decorate with aren’t, they?  But Oh!!! The price tag that comes with them is sometimes out of control!  Here’s a simple tutorial to make your own zippered pillow cover.  You can change them out from season to season, or switch up your decor look within minutes!

First things first…

Decide what size pillow you want.  You can use an existing pillow you have or purchase an insert.  I chose to use 20″ x 20″ inserts.

Supplies:
*Pillow insert
*Fabric- any wovens, quilting cotton, corduroy, velvet, fur
*Zipper- Your zipper should be a few inches shorter than the length of your pillow.  I used 16″ zippers with my 20″ inserts.
*Optional heat-transfer vinyl for silhouette OR Optional heat-n-bond for applique.

Step 1: Cutting
You will cut your fabric so it is the same size as your pillow.  With our 1/2″ seam allowance, the pillow will fit nice and snug inside the cover once sewn. 🙂 Cut a square for both the front and back of pillow.  Example, for my 20″ x 20″ pillow, I cut 2, 20″ x 20″ squares.  For an 18″ pillow, you would cut 2,  18″ x 18″ squares.

Step 2: Embellishing front of cover
Megan G. created several winter/Christmas designs for you to use on your pillows!  You can find the files here!  She has them designed for the Silhouette or Cricut, so you can use heat-transfer vinyl.  Or they are in PDF form, so you can print, cut out, and applique.  I do not have a silhouette machine, so I used the applique technique to embellish!

To Applique: Assemble the pdf (see picture below).  Cut your design out from paper, trace design on heat-n-bond.  Iron heat-n-bond to fabric. Cut out design.  Peel paper backing off.  Press applique on pillow cover.  Stitch applique.

Step 3: Zipper
Put the right sides of front and back cover together.  Make sure your designs and patterns are going in the direction you are wanting them to go!  Lay your zipper on the bottom edge of cover, centering it.  Place pins where your zipper starts and stops.  Remove your zipper and set it aside for now.

We are going to use a basting stitch in between the pins (see yellow dashed line).  We will use a regular stitch to the left and right sides of pins (see straight yellow lines).  For best results, stitch across the corners diagonally.

Press seam open.

Lay your zipper face down, aligning it with the center seam.  Pin zipper in place.

Put your zipper foot on your sewing machine and stitch zipper in place.

Use a seam ripper to pick out the basting stitch.  Now we have access to our zipper. YAY!

Unzip enough so you can fit your hand through to turn the cover later.

Step 4: Finishing
Put the front and back right sides together, lining up other 3 edges.  Pin.  Stitch together along the 3 open sides.  Stitch across the corners diagonally, again.

Clip corners.  Turn cover right side out.  Push corners with a point turner or chopstick.

Stuff insert into cover and enjoy your custom-made pillow-cover!  TIP:  If using fur, you may want to trim some of the fur away from the zipper so it doesn’t get caught.

Some of our wonderfully creative testers took the Silhouette files and embellished clothes!  Check out what they made!  TIP:  You may need to scale the designs down to fit your clothing item.

  

How much fun are those Silhouette/Cricut files!  Oh, the possibilities!!!  Don’t forget to join us in the Made for Mermaids Pattern Group to share what you’ve made and to see more sneak peeks of our 12 Days of Freebies!

M4M’s 12 Days of Christmas Freebies
December 1 – 12, 2015
Day 1 – Mermaid Tail Blanket
Day 2- Tiffany Collar
Day 3- Sleep Masks
Day 4- Coffee Cozy
Day 5- Dolly Bedding