Anthropologie style piped pillow

You guys.

I would love to be humble right here, I really would, but would you look at this pillow?

It. Is. Gorgeous.

It was my first pillow project to use a iron-on stabilizer. And my first project to make and use piping. And it has an invisible zipper. The trifecta.

See that zipper? No, you don't, because it's invisible.




The fabric for this guy is actually a vintage tea towel. I stumbled upon it at Canton flea market for $2. TWO DOLLARS. I knew immediately it had to, nay, deserved to be a pillow. It says it's 100% Irish linen, which I guess is impressive? I didn't really know the Irish were known for their linen.

$15.77 in other supplies later (fiber fill, back fabric, fusible interfacing, piping cord, piping fabric, and zipper - all from JoAnn's, with coupons, of course) I had this beauty. So for a total of $17.77 and a few hours of my life, I have a one of a kind pillow that would easily have cost me $98 at Anthropologie.

If you're making a sad face now because this fabric is from a flea market and you will never find it, hey, I get it. But take heart, because you could just as easily spend $5 for a napkin on sale at Anthro and do this yourself. I have bought fabric there many a time off the sale racks (in the form of napkins and tea towels and tablecloths) and repurposed them. Like this one in Max's room:

And of course you could go dig through piles and piles of fabric at a flea market or garage sale, if you have the time and patience. Which I usually do not. But it totes paid off this time.

If you've never made a fancy pants pillow like this before, let me point you to a few tutorials:

To make your own piping, go here.

To sew the piping onto a pillow, go here. Her technique for closing the binding is nothing short of epic. Take a look at the image above. You can only kind of sort of see where I joined the biding, on the left side of the photo. It's awesome.

To add an invisible zipper, go here.

I used Pellon 808 weight craft fuse to back my backer fabric, by the way, to make it feel more substantial and professional. And 3/16" piping cord. The piping fabric is USA USA Coral Solid (or so says my receipt) and the back is USA USA Navy (although it's really more of a deep blue-violet than a navy).

Also, you need a zipper foot to make this happen. There certainly might be other ways to do it, but it makes the sewing so much easier. It gets the needle riiiiiight up against the piped edge.

Um, please ignore the hideous amount of dust and fuzz on my machine foot. YIKES. Time for a cleaning.

It's so preppy. And I love it. If you couldn't tell.

If you're looking to try out a new sewing technique in general, you can hop over to my sewing basics Pinterest board and find a tutorial there. I only keep links to things that really work from people who do a really good job of explaining things. If I don't like it, it gets deleted. Ain't nobody got time for a meh tutorial.

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