DIY throw pillow renovation

I call this project a renovation, because I actually transformed an unwanted throw pillow into a tasteful new accent on my sofa. This renovation made the project so much more affordable and gave me a great frame to work with. If you have throw pillows that don't match any more or see someone getting rid of some- grab them! By this I am talking about the good feather filled throw pillows that can be easily fluffed to look as good as new time and time again. Never waste money on the Poly-fil stuffed pillows or something like that which mats down in no time at all. Sure you can try to re-fluff them, but it is never quite as good as new, and after some time more there is really no hope for such pillows. Feathers, however, do not loose their structure and can still make great pillows years down the road.
When I was married I got some of my first furniture from model townhouses that had been sold to individuals so the developer was selling all of the staging furniture and accessories. They had several pillows leftover that nobody purchased which they were ready to just give away to get them out of their storage garage.  Noticing their feather quality, I quickly jumped on the opportunity, even though it meant storing them for several years before transforming them into something I actually wanted in my house. But thanks to that effort, today I have a beautiful set of sofa pillows which cost me only $2.50 in discounted fabric. I took my time searching and found fabric I finally liked on clearance at Hobby Lobby. My other money saving trick was to utilize baby cradle sheets which I was ready to get rid of anyways. I could have just doubled my cost, buying twice as much fabric, but instead I got two cases out of buying only 2/3 of a yard, and utilized the fabric of the cradle sheets for the back side of the pillow. This prevented the need for any pattern matching from front to back, saved money, and turned some of my trash into treasure. It was a definite win-win!

1.  Now to start this project, I removed the pillow form inserts from the decorative case, and then took my seam ripper to remove the zipper as well. It was a good quality zipper, and the more I re-purposed, the more I saved.

original pillow cover with pillow form insert removed and zipper picked out

2.  I laid out my fabric to use the original pillow cover as a pattern for my new one. I cut and prepared to sew. Starting with the zipper! 

3.  I wanted to sew in a lap zipper and used a YouTube video (there are plenty out there) as a refresher for how to do this. 

4.  Once the zipper was in it was really just a matter of completely sewing up the remaining three sides then flipping the pillow right-side-out. I repeated for pillow #2, and refilled the new cases with the existing pillow forms.  Just like that, two new sofa pillows in an afternoon!

Final sofa arrangement. Blog post on mismatched smaller pillows to follow...