Where's Waldo?

This is the game I had been playing with my throw pillows on my couch for, oh around a month after the couch arrived.  The game should more accurately be titled: Where’s the throw pillows?  You see, I am in love with brown…dark rich chocolate brown!  So naturally after couch hunting for some time we decided on a big comfy brown sectional that would fit my 6’4 hubby and me perfectly.  Here is where the dilemma comes in – the throw pillows that came with the couch were awful!  They went immediately to the garage because I couldn’t stand them even being in my living room. But have no fear!  I happened to have four nice throw pillows that I had accumulated over the years that would go nicely with the couch. These pillows happened to be….you guessed it, dark rich chocolate brown! For several months we had a couch that looked like this:

Yes, you could barely tell we had pillows and it looked like a disaster. BUT being on a budget crunch I felt I had little options when it came to buying new, due to my thoroughly disappointing trip to Pier 1 Imports.  This trip ended in me finding some “eehhh these are ok” pillows for $40.00 a pop.  If you do the math that means to adequately pillow my couch it would run me $160.00.  After my slight heart attack I figured there must be some other way! That’s when I ran across a little tutorial similar to this one at From An Igloo that would be the answer I needed.  Ahh, it was so obvious the whole time! The solution to my dilemma was sewing me up some throw pillow covers.  And, since I am so close to an outlet fabric store I wasted no time getting my butt over there.  I wanted to buy upholstery fabric so it was thicker and more durable, but I fell in love with these outdoor fabrics.  As a general rule you can use any fabric for throw pillow covers so I didn’t let the fact that it was outdoor fabric stop me!

This fabric had just the deep blues and bright greens I had envisioned for my living room!  Plus, at $3.99 a yard on super clearance that meant this fabric was easy on my wallet too!  I chose to mix a smaller geometric patter with a larger floral patter to give the pillows some visual interest.  The fabrics complement each other because they have coordinating colors, but the different styles of patterns make them a funky pair. The total for the fabric was around $16.00 and it covered my four pillows with a little to spare.  The icing on the cake though, was that a week later I found this same fabric at JoAnn’s Fabrics for around $35.00 a yard – major victory for me!  After enlisting the free help of my mom to sew me up some covers this is what I got:

The back gaps a bit at times, making it look like a couple of mummy eyes, so it is an option to tack it closed with a couple of small stitches.  However if you pull the back seams together they look pretty good and will stay closed for awhile.  Otherwise, the tutorial by From An Igloo has a thicker seam on the back that helps prevent the backs from opening up as much.     

I was happy that the pillows coordinated with my floating shelves.  I can see my color scheme in the living room finally coming together.  So with the throw pillow situation figured out it is on to the next project: the blah coffee table!  Check back for an update on the coffee table re-do!