Home Project: envelope pillow covers

When we moved into the house we're renting, it was partly furnished. And on our very meager one-income-in-southern-california budget, we have had to make use of all of the free stuff we can get.

But finally, I got really sick of the ugly pillows that came on our couch, so last week I used my lunch break to pick up some on-sale fabric (In reality, I was there to buy an emergency sewing kit to fix a giant hole in my shirt before a meeting that afternoon, and got distracted by the pretty colors)

(but let's pretend I wasn't)

I took the fabric home and with my fingers crossed began haphazardly cutting it with my kitchen scissors and a 12 inch ruler .

I don't need to tell you it was a bit of a disaster.

So I searched online for a tutorial and found this

brilliant. A cover that can be made without ruining current ugly pillows (just in case our landlord ever wants them back), and doesn't involve hand-stitching or stuffing--

I was sold.

Here is one of the old ugly pillows

I began by ironing the fabric heavily because it was so thick, tried to measure carefully on my kitchen table using the leaf indents as measurements (the closes I had to straight lines) and hemmed the edges.

the pillows I was covering was 18 inches, so my 3 pieces of fabric were

19x19

19x 11.5

19x11.5

Then I pinned the three pieces together (one front, two back pieces)

Then stitched the edges, all the way around, at a half inch and snipped the corners.

Flipped it inside out and pushed out the corners

When it was completely right-sided, it looked like this

I was SO thrilled.

I stuffed the ugly pillow inside and breathed a sigh of relief

this project is relatively simple and easy, but it took me a total of probably 4 hours for 4 pillows, including ironing sewing and stuffing.

I haven't used a machine in probably 5+ years and don't own any of the equipment I should have. (I would love some sewing equipment like this!)

I do own a pair of sewing scissors, three colors of thread, and I borrowed a 30-year-old sewing machine from my mother-in-law.

But if you have the right supplies, this is a simple enough project, so I hope you try it too!

(unfortunately there's very little that can be done for our well-worn couch.)

I need a new cheap home project to work on next--any suggestions?