How to make a pillow out of napkins

I promised to post a how to on my pillow sham, so here it is!

 

I found a wonderful vintage linen tablecloth on ebay that I bought to make into a bed skirt for the master bedroom of my West Palm Beach cottage. (To be shown this coming Sunday) It came with a bonus of 9 matching dinner sized napkins. I played around with making a coverlet for the guest bedroom, but landed on the idea of  making a European pillow sham instead.

Seaming four napkins together for each side created a larger than needed square, so I made a 1.5" inset seam around the perimeter, creating a flat flange detail. Then I appliqued the 5th napkin on a diagonal to the front of the pillow to hide the seams that joined the four front napkins

When choosing your linens, choose ones with nice embroidery detailing like these. I am a sucker for handkerchief linen.

I finished the back of the sham with a button closure and some pretty mother of pearl buttons.

                                                                                                                                

This is one of those times when it is great to have a button hole attachment on your sewing machine. The edge of the napkins made a really nice binding for the overlapping fabric.

Later this week I'll show how to make the box spring cover, it's all a conspiracy to make you come back for another visit to my blog. (Is it working??)             

Linking to:  nifty thrifty tuesday