Re-covered pillow #2, Gathered Pillow

I re-covered one of our old pillows a few months ago and just did a simple pillow cover. It looks fine (click here to see that project), but it's the only pillow that I did and it looked awfully lonely sitting there on our couch... So, I decided to give it a companion! :)

I wanted to make this one a little fancier so I decided to do a gathered pillow. This was my first time doing a gather on anything! I was kinda n.e.r.v.o.u.s. but I decided to go for it! I followed this tutorial here on Make It and Love It.

Materials:
~ Old, ugly pillow
~ Scrap fabric

To start off with, I needed to cover up the ugly pillow I started with. Even once the original cover was taken off it was pretty ugly, and since the fabric I used it kind of see-through I went ahead and just made a really simple, white pillow case.


The next step was to cut out the fabric that I wanted to use for the gathering part. I wanted mine to end up with the measurements of 15 x 16. Whenever you gather something you want to double the length of the gathered part. So I cut out a piece of fabric that was 15 x 32. I figured out where I wanted my gathers to be, roughly every 2 1/2 inches apart for me. I placed pins every 2 1/2 inches at each end and in the middle of the fabric, just to make sure I stayed pretty straight :)
To make a gathering stitch, make sure that your machine is set to the basting stitch (usually just the longest stitch it can do) and sew straight down so that you've sown a straight line down the fabric every 2 1/2 inches. Make sure that you DO NOT back-stitch at the top and bottom!

Once I sewed all of my lines down the fabric (with OUT back stitching) it was time to start gathering it :) To gather, take the top thread and just pull to gather the fabric together. On the first one I did the other end came out! whoops!! So after that I started pinning down one side to a new piece of fabric that had the dimensions of what I wanted my finished gathered pillowcase to have (15 x 16). Then I just pulled away and adjusted so that the gathers were even.
Now that the gathers were all done, I needed to make sure that they would stay in place. So I sewed the two pieces of fabric together (my gathered top and the extra 15 x 16 piece it was pinned to) right on top of the gather stitch. I had some excess fabric left over so I just c-u-t that off. If you do this make sure you don't cut too much off :)

Now all I needed was to add the back! :) I cut out yet another 15 x 16 piece and placed right sides together. Then I sewed around the edges leaving just enough room to stuff the pillow inside. I turned the pillow case right-side-out and then hand-stitched the last few inches.

Voila! How do you like it!

That looks much better than one lonely pillow doesn't it? Especially since this one has PeRsoNaLiTy :)Cost:

~ Old, ugly pillow $0.00
~ Scrap fabric $0.00

Gathered Pillow Case: Total Cost ~ $0.00! Wahoo!