Hope your weekend was wonderful! I spent a ton of time in front of the sewing machine working on pillows for both the master bedroom and the window seat in the kitchen.
I was thinking as I was working on everything -- teaching myself to sew is one of the best things I’ve ever done. I mean, I learned how to do it in junior high school, but then didn’t sew again till I was in my early 30’s. Making your own pillows (and drapes!) can save SO MUCH money and it’s such an easy thing to do to change up your space.
So the topic today is the master bedroom. You know those photos of the gorgeous beds in Pottery Barn – the pillows are all perfect and the bed is so fluffy and it just looks so cozy? Well, I’ve never been good at that. I just throw the our pillows on the bed, the shams the come with the bedding and then some throw pillows. It looks fine – there’s nothing wrong with that! I’ve just always wanted a more luxurious look.
When I made our (less than) $100 tufted headboard I got new bedding from HomeGoods and the redo of our bedroom started:
Oh my goodness! Sweetness. Look at the innocence in his eyes. It’s gone now. ;)
I’ve always struggled between wanting a calm and soothing bedroom and one that has some contrast and feels more cozy. So next I decided to do both and created this paneled wall in dark gray behind the bed:
And since then I’ve been wanting to complete the look of the bedding too.
I’ve searched high and low for the right accent fabric for the bed. At first I thought I wanted to add something in navy to pull in our lamps. I actually picked out a set of navy curtain panels but it looked all wrong. I ended up taking one of the shams from our bedding with me one day and then I finally found something I knew would work. It helped immensely to have it with me as I looked!
Yet again, I went with curtain panels:
I look at any kind of fabric when I’m considering pillows or drapes or really anything – curtains for sure, shower curtains too. You know how much I love table linens as pillows! So don’t limit yourself to the fabric store my friends.
On my last trip to IKEA I found large feather euro inserts…for TEN DOLLARS. People – that is seriously worth the drive if you are ever looking to make these. Those are usually at least twice that amount elsewhere. Anyway, the two curtain panels were plenty to make three euro pillows – I cut three squares from each panel, making sure that the repeat of the fabric was at least similar on each one. A professional would make sure they all match exactly but I’m not that picky. :)
I knew I wanted some smaller accent pillows too, but couldn’t find the right fabric. So…I decided to use the shams that came with our bedding. Our duvet and these shams are more of a sheet material – really thin and soft, so the sham never looked right. It was always too floppy. So I decided reuse them to make pillow covers:
They weren’t large enough to do two 20 inch square pillows, so as luck would have it I already had two smaller inserts that were 16 inches – I just did two 16 inch pillows out of one sham and then one 20 inch for the middle. It worked out pretty darn great!:
I pulled out the king shams from another sheet set and added those as well. Those are more of a purpley gray and blue gray combo, and I got them years back to go with the duvet. The colors match those in the duvet perfectly -- it’s hard to see the design on them in pics though.
But amazingly, all of the different grays really came together beautifully!:
It’s all feels so fancy! It cost me $50 to go from just the shams to this. The pillow inserts were $10 each and the curtain panels were $30 (for two). I still have some of that fabric leftover to do accent pillows elsewhere in the room.
Since I had the inserts for the smaller pillows (and reused my shams), those didn’t cost my anything. I’ve had the long pillow in the front since I got the new bedding but it looks so much better now:
Sorry for the light – this room is SO hard to photograph! After all that time it was way easier to finish this up than I thought. It really helped that I finally decided to just take one of the pillow cases with me so I could see what really worked with it when I was out and about.
I am so ready to get moving on finishing up this makeover – it’s been going on for years now! I get sidetracked easily, if you haven't noticed:
Next up, I WILL be painting the three other walls, finally. I almost started this weekend but I want to get going when I know I can finish at least one wall. (They are all big, tall walls.)
And I’ll also be recovering the bench at the end of the bed – I found the PERFECT fabric last week but it’s so expensive. I need to do some measuring to see how much I would need. It would look so good! I’ve also been on the lookout for a set of small dressers to use as night stands, but can’t find any that are the right size:
I really want something older from a thrift store or Craigslist, but I’ll just have to be patient and keep looking.
But I’m THRILLED with my curtain panel pillows! ;) As I said, think outside of of the box when it comes to fabric – I usually find the perfect fabric somewhere other than the fabric store.
Our bed feels so luxurious and cozy. Now feel like I should make the bed
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