operation color and home-sewn pillows

happy wednesday! i'm back to share another living room project. this time it is pillows.

we've been "moved in" to the living room for almost two years, but it has been very bare. when we chose carpet, fireplace tile, and wall color, i didn't have a good vision for the room's color scheme so we played it safe with beigey neutrals on the warm side. add the brown couch and chair and it was total dullsville. the room needed color and life!

this was right after we had carpet installed in november 2009. you can call it boring. i won't be mad.

the lovely curtains were the "jumping-off point" (sarah richardson, anyone?) for the color scheme: aqua and yellow in addition to greige, white, and brown. so for pillows, i wanted aqua and yellow for sure, and i also decided to add a little pink to make things interesting. i'm so glad ben likes pink!

first, i happened upon a great aqua lumbar pillow at home goods. then i ponied up some credit card points for a few (free!) yards of these two fabrics. i used two old pillows for pillow forms and bought two more down forms from ikea, so my costs were really minimal.

 found

here

found

here

i used

this tutorial

to sew zippered pillow covers so i can take them off and wash them. (this is also where

i sewed the zippers on inside out

. oops.)

here's what we ended up with.

i am excited to show you the next project. it was very time consuming, but it is definitely one of my all-time favorites.