Inventing the Pillow

You know how, when you make a new thing you've never made before and you're really pleased with the results, you kinda feel like you invented the wheel? Well, that's how I felt after I made this:This little journey of mine started when I saw a burlap bag on Etsy. Cute, I thought, and we're all into the whole green thing; plastic bags are evil. But...a bag? Straps? Actual construction? I've already mentioned that I am a sew-a-straight-line kinda gal and while I recognize good, quality work, I am not necessarily capable of doing such work myself. Yet.

A little further browsing brought me to some pillows. A pillow! Yeah, I can do that. Especially when I read that burlap pillows are selling for upwards of $100 at specialty decor stores. A burlap pillow would be just the thing for the Stagecoach place (nice and rustic, no?); and since we're preparing to be broke as hell as we head into the closing, I'm going to have to get pretty creative about the whole furnishing/decorating thing over there.

But making a pillow would require installing a zipper (huh?) or closing the case with some hand stitching, another thing I am woefully bad at. A sudden flash of brilliance reminded me of that handy thing called an envelope pillow case. You can find a couple of helpful tutorials on how to make an envelope pillow case here and here. I read both tutorials carefully and then just winged it at my studio. If that doesn't spell e-a-s-y, I don't know what does. I'm getting ready to re-pillowcase several cushions around my house here shortly. And, since I bought a large batch of burlap coffee sacks, I'm going to pick my favorite two for my own pillows, and sell the rest. Maybe on ballerinuts.com (since that seems to be my catch-all website at the moment)