Home Goods ugly throw pillow makeover & Christmas crafts

I LOVE HOME GOODS. I have only recently discovered this store and its full potential for all things crafty. After reading Deborah Needleman's The Perfectly Imperfect Home, I started to get a little obsessed with throw pillows. They're a great, inexpensive, small-space way to add color and personality to a room (did I actually just write that?). We went for fairly plain couches so I have been using the pillows to add a little funk...we got a super-cute fox pillow, a little blue deer, and various others from Goodwill (new from Target) and Home Goods.

...But the really fun part is scouring the clearance rack at Home Goods for REALLY NICE down pillows that have super ugly covers...the pillow itself is still much much nicer than the much more expensive poly-fil pillow forms from Joann's, even when they are on clearance! (Side note: You can do the same with framed art, mirrors, etc...we found a beautiful mirror for $14!) THEN...look in the clearance section of the kitchen department for tablecloths or cloth napkins. These provide either a lot of yardage, or pre-cut squares of nice thick upholstery fabric for way cheaper than at the fabric store. You can also find single curtain panels in a lot of the clearance sections or the "new from Target" section of Goodwill. These are usually looked over because who needs a single curtain panel? But it's as low as $6 for nearly 3 yards of beautiful, thick, 100% woven cotton fabric! That's a really good price.

So for one gift (above), I re-covered a super ugly fest throw pillow that came with our scratch-n-dent couches from Save More Furniture in Owego (it's where floor models go to die) with fabric cut from a $6 clearance tablecloth at Home Goods. I used this tutorial. It came out great, I think! I also did a similar cushion (I forgot to get a picture!!) with quilting cotton and a tutorial for pinch pleats. I actually just did them by machine instead of by hand and got the same result.

A second gift I loved making was cut from a combination of a cotton tablecloth (Home Goods again) and a clearance fat quarter pack from Joann's. I used my new free motion foot to sloppily embroider my friends' last names into the cushion. They tell me they are really digging it with their maroon couch. This is what I mean by adding a "safe" or comfortable amount of a bright color like orange that might be overwhelming with something bigger. They are such bright, happy people I had to go with orange, though!

The next few pictures are of things I made mostly using just one jelly roll from a quilt shop in Greene...though jelly rolls or design rolls can be found everywhere. They are great for lazy people like me because the designs are pre-coordinated for you. I got four throw pillow fronts using a combination of paper piecing and quilt-as-you-go (Radiohead fans will appreciate this), two table runners (though only one is pictured), and most of a quilt for my lovely mother-in-law featuring an appliqued boom bass. Fun!

And then a random-ass piece of quilting experiment...

And finally...a jelly roll quilt with Moda's Kansas Trouble Favorites! I had never used Moda fabric before. It's soooo much nicer than the calicos at Joann's! This used the entire jelly roll mostly because of the diagonals, and because I used the strips to bind it off, too. That's all...Happy New Year!