masculine/feminine pillows

Aren't these pillows so adorable? Guess what? They were FREE to make! Want to make one (or ten)?

I saw how to make these great fabric flowers on V and Co's website and knew I had to try them out! LOVE them!

This is V and Co's photo

I needed something to put these pretty flowers on and I didn't want to add them to existing pillows, so I needed to make some new pillow covers. I will show you how below.

I only changed two things about the flowers: I used old white tab top cotton curtains I had on hand (which was originally a sheet! Major recycling going on!) instead of flannel and upon my mom's brilliant suggestion, I cut them on the bias. This just means I cut the strips out diagonally, not straight across. I did not even measure, just folded the curtain on the diagonal and cut ~1.5 inch wide strips and repeated this process until I felt I had enough strips (about 15 or so, I think). The reason behind cutting on the bias? So I would not have to hem them and they would not ravel. Did I mention brilliant??? I even ran the strips through the regular wash and dry cycles to make sure they would be okay and THEY WERE! Here are the flowers that I made:

Next...talk about reduce, reuse, recycle...man I was able to do all that! My husband was getting rid of loads of clothes he no longer wanted and there were a bunch of button down shirts. He had them all bagged up ready to set out on the curb for the Veteran's Fund to come pick up. Well, I dug into them before they were curbside and pulled out a few. I cut the body the of 2 shirts into squares that would fit a small pillow form I had. (One of the shirts had little pink strawberry chapstick stains. No one would want to wear it anyway, so I did not feel soooo guilty about taking them out of the Veteran's Fund bag.) I cut the squares a little off center to accommodate the pocket that I wanted on the pillow.

The most excellent part of using an old button down shirt is that you don't have to put in a zipper!!! I cannot put in a zipper to save my life (nor have a really tried and don't really want to thank you very much), and I MUST be able to take pillow covers off to wash them, so this was perfection!

I needed another pillow form in order to make two same sized pillows, so out of the same white cotton sheet-turned-curtain-turned flowers, I made another pillow form. Then my little elf came and helped me fill it with batting I already had on hand.

Here is the finished pillow form and cover. I can't get these 2 photos to flip around for some reason (so frustrating when blogspot does that!).

The other side of both pillows.

Next, I sewed 5 of the flowers on the corner of each of the pillows for a nice BIG rufflely flower effect!
And voila! All done and sitting pretty on our couch ready for spring! Masculine on one side and feminine on the other!
Thank you V and Co for the lovely flower tutorial! I was just thinking how these flowers would even be cute done in a print...hmmmmm...I may have to get on that!