I went to Michael’s about two weeks ago to look for muslin for our homemade lightbox, and got to browsing the Valentine’s Day section.  I found these things called ‘party felt’ that were located in the baking area.  I suppose they could be used for trivets or party table decorations.  There were a variety of of hot pink and red ones.   It reminded me of a project I saw on Pinterest last year.  I bought one that read “Love” on it, and picked up some pink flannel at the nearby fabric store– where I also found the muslin I was looking for.  I thought that I wouldn’t make a pillow for valentine’s day, as pillows take up a lot of room in storage.  Rather, I would make an envelope pillow cover that would fold flat into a storage bin.

Incidentally, I also saw a great tutorial at Frugal Ain’t Cheap about making a pillow cover from one piece of fabric.  I’m not sure if I followed it completely, but it was brilliant to think I could make a perfectly even pillow cover with one, yes one, piece of fabric.  Here’s what I did, which I believe is close to what was recommended on Frugal Ain’t Cheap:

I need 2/3 of a yard of flannel for the pillow cover.  The pillow that I wanted to create a cover for was an 18″x18″ pillow, so I measured the flannel to be 22″ wide, and 32″ long.  I hemmed both “folds of the envelope.

After hemming both ends of the “folds,” I folded the ends of the pillow over,  so that the length of the pillow was approximately 20″. Then I measured out 20″ wide, slightly wider than the length of the pillow and pinned up the sides of the pillow:

I then trimmed the excess material off of the sides of the pillow and turned it rightside out.  I tested the pillow out before attaching the felt “Love,” to make sure that the pillow cover actually worked.  I think the backside of the pillow ended up looking pretty good:

Following the directions on the Head and Bond, I used an iron to adhere the Head and Bond on the back side of the felt “Love” shape and using very sharp scissors, I trimmed around the shape. (This was the most challenging part of the entire project!)  After the shape was trimmed out of the Head and Bond paper, I positioned the shape where I  wanted it to go.

NOTE: This the part where I needed to deviate from the Head and Bond instructions.  Felt does not respond well to heat, so I positioned the felt on the pillow cover, and then turned the pillow cover inside out.  I ironed the felt onto the pillow cover from the inside of the pillow cover.  This protected the felt from melting.  It also took a few minutes longer than the directions suggested for the felt to fully attach to the pillow cover.

Here is the end result:

It looks so cute and cheerful on our couch.  I like it so much that I might make another one!  I guess I had better hurry before Valentine’s Day gets here!

I’m sharing my pillow here:

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