Spice it Up with Sewing

Before we purchased the home we live in, my husband bought us a pair of white wooden rocking chairs for the porch he always wanted to have. The chairs sat in my in-laws basement, in the box, until Christmas 2008 when we decided to assemble the chairs and sit in the living room in front of the fireplace. I wish I had pictures of that! The chairs went back to the basement, now assembled, for another 11 months until we moved into our house. We took our Christmas card picture sitting in the chairs.

I am petite, at 5'5 the deep chairs were sometimes uncomfortable for me to sit in. In order to solve my dilemma, I made my own pillows this weekend! At the craft store the pillow forms were 50% off and I found a beautiful home fabric that is red, orange, yellow, blue and lime green - perfect for our chairs. I decided 14x14 would be a good size (although I could have gone up to 16x16).

 

*Unfortunately the colors look dull in my photos compared to in person*

I chose to make simple pillow covers because this was the first time I made something other than a blanket or baby burp cloth. I planned to allow for 1/2 hem on each side of the pillow, but made a 15" square for the front and two rectangles for the back. The two rectangles were 15" on the long edge and then 9.5" (1/2 of square length + 2.5") on the short edge. this meant that the rectangles on the back overlapped.

 

I finished the straight edges of the rectangles by folding under the raw edge and folding again using a basic straight stitch. One that was done, I pinned everything together and simply sewed around the whole square. Then I turned it right side out.

The finished product adds a cheerful spot to our front porch and I couldn't be happier with them!