Spiderweb Pillow Slipcovers

I love bringing a little holiday festivity into our living spaces with some seasonal pillows, but when you decorate as much as I do, storage becomes a problem in a hurry. Half of my garage is filled with Christmas decorations, adding a bunch of pillows would take up more space than I have. But a small square of fabric? That I can do. So the answer was to make a seasonal pillow that my everyday pillows could fit inside.

First you have to decorate the front. Since these pillows are going in my spooky cream and black room, I thought spiderweb pillows would be perfect. Cut a square of black fabric big enough to cover the front of the pillow you’ll be stuffing. A little roomy is better than too small, so cut it generously. Leaving at least a good inch of allowance in case you need to take it in a bit, fill the square with the spiderweb design. I used a silver thread and went over each line two or three times to get good visibility. Start by making two X’s in different directions, dividing the fabric into 1/8th’s.

Then connect those segments by sewing swooping, messy, lines across them. The messier you do this, the better it will look, since nature, but especially spooky spiders, is not perfect. Skip the occasional segment, don’t have the ends line up, make this look haphazard and it will look great.

To make the back, cut a piece of fabric the same width as the front, but a couple of inches wider. Cut this piece straight down the middle and insert a zipper. Trim the back piece as necessary when finished, so it matches the size of the front all over.

I added a ruffle to my pillow by creating a long strip of the contrast fabric, 4 inches wide. Double it over with the wrong sides together, and match the raw edges to the edge of the pillow front, pinning the pillow back piece on top of that. When it’s time to turn a corner, cut a slash in the seam allowance and stretch it open, being careful to pin the ruffle out of the way of the seamline. You don’t want to sew your ruffle to itself.

Open the zipper a bit before you sew, then sew all the way around the edge of the pillow, turn it right side out through the zipper, and put your usual every day pillow inside.

So often my holiday decor looks a little unbalanced as all the decorations go on the flat surfaces and all the soft parts of the room are left nakedly unfestive. Now I can make pillows for every holiday without needing to rent a storage unit.