$30 Thursday: Ballard Designs Inspired Pillow

For a long time I’ve admired the gorgeous bedding from Ballard Designs with the pom pom fringe. It’s mostly classic with a touch of vintage… which is sort of the vibe I like to have in our home. But I didn’t need a bedding set… I just needed a pillow cover. Enter:

I had a SmartSilk King sized pillow that I use as a body pillow when I sleep (some habits die hard from pregnancy body pillows :)) and because I didn’t have a good cover for it I decided to make my own removable cover that would look great covering the pillow. I wanted to display this pillow on our bed, because it’s a king sized pillow and is the perfect size to stretch 3/4 of the way across the bed, but also because I knew I’d be sleeping with it every night so it had better be washable.

My first step was cut the fabric smaller than it looked like I’d need it. This pillow feels like it’s filled with feathers (it’s really micro-gel fill) so it really compresses when you lay on it… which meant I needed to make the cover slightly snug. I bought some quilting backing from Joann Fabrics, it was so affordable, I think the fabric alone came to $7ish. I made sure to cut it through the diamonds to get a straight cut.

Then I had to stitch up the two raw ends so that they wouldn’t unravel (does quilting backing do that?) or let the quilting filler out.

Then I turned the pillow inside out and did a straight line stitch down the sides. Now I had a pillow insert, I was going for was something a bit more interesting though… have you ever seen Ballard Designs Pom Pom bedding?  I wanted to do my own version of it… a more affordable version. I found this pom pom trim for $2 a yard at Joann’s and purchased enough to go around three sides of the pillow and then make ties for the bottom of the pillow.

 

Because the area below the pom poms didn’t give me enough space to sew it into the sides of the pillow, so all you saw were the pom poms, I opted to sew it right onto the pillow seams because the edge of the pom pom fringe is pretty decorative. I just did tiny stitches with white thread so it’s mostly invisible and it looks great.

 

Here she is all finished in our bedroom! I am gearing up for fall now and love how this adds a touch of warmth with the quilted fabric. Doesn’t the fireplace look gorgeous and cozy in the room? It was a Home Depot score while we were engaged. It was our first DIY. AJ painted it (it was dark wood previously) and I decorated it and then when we got married and move here it went with us! (Similar item here.)

What is the best knock-off you’ve ever done? This is definitely one of my favorites but I also love the spring knock-off Pottery Barn Kids bunny wreath or our bed frame which we designed around a West Elm product we loved.

 

 

I was provided two Smart Silk pillows to review and use but all opinions in this post are my own, including how they are super comfortable pillows and how they are the perfect size to top off a queen sized bed. You can find Smart Silk on Twitter and Facebook. And you can also look forward to how I’m going to use the other Smart Silk pillow in Drew’s room. 🙂