George, George George of the Jungle, watch out for that tree!

the George of the Jungle quote is inspired by the initial purpose for this project. a good friend of mine had been living with a bay-window cushion covered in this hideous jungle print:

clearly she would like this re-covered with something a bit more modern and maybe even easier to coordinate decor with? so that's where i come in! she picked out all her fabric for the cushion, two coordinating pillows, and two couch pillows for her living room, and i went to work.

ripped all the fabric off

sorry that i did a horrible job taking pictures as i went, i had never done this before and i was concentrating more on getting it right.
this is when i had the front and sides sewn together, and i was measuring if the corners worked, and then doin a little dance because they DID!

finished! to save fabric (a lot of it, surprisingly) i used 3 pieces for the top of the cushion

to  make it removable without the hassle of having to attach a zipper, i made it envelope-style where the two sides of the back just fold over each other to conceal, but no zipper or buttons, and you can still remove it to wash the covering. it takes a little muscle to get it in and out, but i made sure i reinforced the two points on the sides where the two pieces meet so they wouldn't rip when removing the cushion


PILLOWS!

she chose square pillows, and since they'll be used a lot i thought envelope-style would make it super easy not only to clean but to replace if she wanted to change the look for cheaper next time. so here's how i did it.
-this pillow was to be 20"x20", so when you cut the fabric for envelope-style, you cut it for 21"x24". the extra 4" is for the fold-over flap in the back, the 1" of course is for seam allowance.

for the 24" length side, you cut that right in half.

then you have 3 pieces of fabric for one pillow

iron down a double-hem, 1/4"-1/2" works fine

pin down

SEW! get as close to the edge where it's folded over as possible to be sure you catch the folded fabric underneath

this fabric has a bit of stretch to it, so i found it was easier to keep it taut over the front of my machine to keep it from bunching as i sewed. not stretched- taut.

after you do this with both pieces of the back side, you just lay them on top of the front piece like you would if you were sewing a regular pillow, only allowing for a fold-over as well. right side to right side!

i pinned the fabric together in a few places throughout, not just at the edges.

sew the edges just like you would a normal pillow

back stitch a few times to reinforce the side points where the cover opens up to remove the pillow to make it last longer.

here's the pillow inside the cover without finished corners. i just like to make sure the size is right before i cut anything away!

flip inside out again, cut the corner diagonally

trim the edges coming away from the corners too, this keeps the fabric corners from bunching up and lets you get nice, pointy corners

pillow form that goes inside, on sale of course! ;)

ta-da! finito.

here's what the back of the envelope-style pillow looks like. so easy and practical! just the way mama likes it