Wonderful news, everyone! I learned how to sew piping! Well, actually there wasn’t much to learn, but I was intimidated. It looks hard. It looks fancy.
I thought I needed a special piping foot for my sewing machine, but it turns out you can get away with using a zipper foot, which is pretty standard and comes with most machines. Hooray!
So I changed out the foot on my sewing machine, pinned, pinned, and pinned some more and voilà! Pillows with piping! I really shouldn’t have been so hesitant. If you can sew a straight line you can sew pillows. And if you can sew pillows, you can sew pillows with piping. I don’t lie.
I can’t remember what directions I referred to, but this looks to be a good tutorial at Design*Sponge. I bought pre-packaged piping, but maybe next time, I will make my own with these instructions.
I ripped open some old throw pillows I no longer wanted and ripped the stuffing out of them. Sounds violent; it wasn’t. They weren’t doing any good hidden away in a closet, and the fabric wasn’t something I was interested in ever using again.
I also stuffed a handful of fabric scraps from recent projects into the middle of one of them as a little surprise to my future self. Hey, it keeps it out of the landfill.
I hand sewed them closed because I didn’t want to mess up the pretty piping. I should probably start hand sewing all my pillows shut because it just gives a nice seamless look. Except for the meeting of the ends of the piping, you can’t tell where they were filled.
I used a little less than half a yard of fabric for each pillow and not quite two packages of piping. Adding it all up, I think these pillows cost around $5 a piece. I already had the stuffing (obviously), but if I had to buy new Poly-fil, it would add approximately $2.50 for each pillow.
p.s. Both of these home decor weight fabrics are in stock at Jo-Ann. Oh, yes, I see you digging (and simultaneously questioning) my use of gingham. If it bothers you, just pretend it’s houndstooth.
I am loving the yellow print on the pillows FAB!