Say hello to Brumm! He came out of retirement temporarily to model for my pictures. Isn’t he quite the gentleman? 60 years old, loved to threads by many generations of children in my family, and still he’s gracious enough to take time from sipping Mai Tais at the beach, finally reading War and Peace (he’s quite the well-read teddy bear and has a predilection for dead wordy Russians) and wearing the most fabulous white socks to pose in front of my pillows. A round of applause for Brumm!

The pillows are entirely made out of leftover fabric, of which I’ve hoarded piles and piles during the past years. You might remember the roses and the gingham from my apron, the trees from the blue retro dress with the white bows, the other two pink fabrics from my catastrophic attempt at a shift dress and the dark blue und black flowers from this blouse. The polka dots fabric is from a project that still has to be photographed …  All this fabric wouldn’t fit in my fabric box anymore, so I decided I needed to reduce my stash.

I had bought three pillows at IKEA a few months ago (also two pairs of slippers and other random items, you know how it is there) because I like to have lots of pillows and blankets in bed. I’m always cold and I need something to cuddle with! But I didn’t buy the covers IKEA also offers. Naaaaah! That would be too easy. I can make those myself, it’d be a shame if I didn’t, right? Right. I had bookmarked this tutorial for envelope pillow covers via How About Orange and used it as a starting off point. I wanted to use as many of my leftover fabrics as possible, but didn’t want to make the same design for each cover. So stripes, squares and diagonal stripes it was!

I love the cover with squares, but I won’t do anything like that in the foreseeable future again. Sooooooo much work! But so pretty. The diagonal stripes were my father’s idea. I was doubtful at first, but I really like the outcome. I was initially worried so many fabrics would end up being too loud. I don’t think that’s the case, though – the repetition of the fabrics and the blue between the pink really ties it together. I’m really happy with those pillows and can’t wait to return to my apartment so I can put them on my bed and cuddle with them!