decorating | Hicks House

We’ve done a lot of work in the Guest Room since moving into our new house. The original room inspiration and all the work can be seen here, here and here. It’s coming along :-).

I really wanted some throw pillows for the bed (I LOVE throw pillows) however neither of us could decide if we wanted the accent color to be light blue or yellow – so we decided to make it changeable so depending on the season or our mood we could change it up. I started with the yellow accent pillows and added a zipper to my homemade pillow covers to that I could re-use the pillow insert.

here’s how it’s done

I started with the pillow insert I was going to use and measured the entire width and height of the pillow.

make sure to go seam to seam

Your fabric needs to be 1 inch wider than your pillow to allow for a 1/2 inch seam allowance and 1 1/4 inches longer to allow for the seam allowance on the top and the zipper insert on the bottom. My pillow was 21 inches square so for my fabric I had to cut out two pannels to be 22×22 1/4.

Draw out your measurements on the BACK of your fabric. If you have a directional pattern like my chevron make sure the lines are straight with the pattern not with the top of your fabric. Its not always the same thing.

see how my line doesn’t line up with the edge of the fabric?

one cut the chevrons are even

iron your fabric pieces

Lay your ironed fabric pieces out and line up the zipper on the longer side of the fabric facing down towards the side of the fabric. I used a 12-inch zipper so I centered it on my 22 inches of fabric. You can use a zipper the entire length of your pillow – its probably easier but thats what I had on hand.

zipper pull should face down

pin in place

Sew the zipper to the fabric using a zipper foot. Make sure to not sew around the zipper pull. When you reach the pull manually wind your needle down into the fabric lift the foot and zip the zipper out of the way so you can continue sewing a straight line. Make sure to backstitch at the begining and end so your zipper stays put.

attach the first side of the zipper

Do the same process for the other side of the zipper. Make sure the right sides of your fabric are facing each other.

repeat the process with the other side.

Now you have two fabric squares attached in the middle with a zipper.

Fold in half right sides together at the zipper and pin the pieces together around the entire perimeter – make sure your zipper is at least half unzipped so that you can turn it right side out when you are done.

pin all sides

Sew the two squares together backstitching at the begining and end for added support. Flip right side out through the zipper.

empty pillow cover

Stuff your pillow insert into your new pillow cover. If you used a small zipper like I did – be careful you don’t want to pop your stitches.

carefully stuff your insert into the case

There you have it, a professional looking zippered pillow case!

zippered bottom

Add it to your bed or sofa and change out the cover to your hearts content!

Zippered Pillow Tutorial

I don’t know about you, but one of my personal pet-peeves whenever I spend the night somewhere is not having somewhere close to the bed to put my phone. Guest rooms and hotel rooms are harder to sleep in as it is for the simple fact that it’s not your room. Having my phone which I use as both a clock (to see what time it is in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep) and an alarm clock (to let me know when it’s socially acceptable to leave the room). Whether everyone is like this or not, everyone should have the opportunity to do this when they stay at The Hicks House. That’s why we were on the hunt for not one but two end tables.

They had to be white for one to match the dresser we spray painted, they had to look nice, and they had to be cheap. This is the guest room after all, they won’t have the everyday wear and tear that the dressers go through in our room.

This hunt took a lot longer than I would like to admit. I feel like when I was looking for dark wood furniture over the last few years, everything in the stores was white… now that I wanted white everything was dark. Uggghhh. Finally we found something we liked at Target.com it was also on sale score so we ordered it.

Arrived!

The fact that it came Ikea style was ok – I mean it was expected after all and it was cheap. It went together pretty quickly too.

It went together pretty quick

Ken had both put together in about an hour. Then we added some fab lamps we also found at Target – in the store though. The shades are a bit too big, but they were clearance $5 so we made the executive decision that they looked just fine. We had a perfectly perfect lamp that matched bedspread it had the same pattern only in the reverse white on blue instead of blue on white. The problem was that I only got one, and despite a statewide hunt of varying HomeGoods I could not find another.

But these look pretty neat too.

shot of them both

Slowly coming along.

getting closer to the inspiration room…

Some throw pillows for the bed, some paint and art on the wall and some curtains and this room will be the perfect home away from home. But not too perfect – I love my guests but they can’t live here. 🙂