Tea Towel Pillow

I've had this new, sweet-but-simple tea towel which I purchased on clearance at Home Goods, for 1.5 years.  I also had a pillow form with an outdated cover over it.  So it made good sense to put the two together.  It's really nice to work with tea towels as fabric...the edges are all finished and it is a quality fabric.

One suggestion I have is that you play around with your tea towel or whatever fabric you plan to use to cover a pillow, and just pin it together around the pillow til you decide how you want to do it.  My tea towel was a bit too wide, and I didn't want to cut off any of the wonderful green stripes.  So by playing with it I came up with a way to make a fold-detail that would make it the right width without cutting any off.

I ironed a crease down the middle of the towel with wrong sides together.

Then opened the towel up, and folded about a 1.5 inch portion of the fabric toward that center crease, pinning it.  Did it on the other side as well...hopefully the picture illustrates that well.

You can see the idea in more detail there.  Kind of a pleat in the middle of the towel, vertically.

Then put the shorter ends of the towel together, right sides together, and sew.  I did a very small seam of about 1/8 of an inch b/c I needed that to make it fit the pillow.

Open the new seam and press

I repinned my pleat in several places, then sewed one of the open ends closed.  I used a larger stitch so that if I ever need to wash this pillow cover, and I fairly easily remove enough of the stitching to slip the pillow out and wash the cover.

Time for the final seam!  I still have the pleat pinned in place so that I could get the pillow form into the pillow without opening the pleat too far.  I didn't remove those pins til after I sewed up that final open side.

A green gross grain ribbon tied around it, to dress it up a bit....and....finis!!  I can add-to and change the embellishment if I figure out something I like better, as the ribbon is just tied on, not sewn on.

And that's it!  I've wanted to do this for weeks...how nice to cross it off my list, and have an extra cushy pillow on the Den futon for when I read in there or watch tv.  Me likes.  :)  Thank you so much for stopping by!  God bless you richly today.  And our love and prayers go out to the dear ones in Joplin who have lost so much.  One last little photo to remind us that God is still good all the time, and gives us sweet gifts in the midst of painful times.  These are the first little cut flowers from my gardens this summer.  

  Blessings! 

Donna
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