Crazy for Paisley

Crazy for Paisley

During my last trip to London, a stop at Liberty was on my list. Full of both the traditional and cutting edge, the store is a gorgeous, iconic landmark worth meandering through. I hadn’t been there since college, when I’d rushed in to buy a scarf for my grandmother.

When I found that scarf in a box recently, I remembered how much Mimi had loved it and how stunning the colors looked next to her silver white hair. Would I ever wear it? Probably not. I’m more comfortable wearing long scarves, like the wool paisley one I bought that same semester at a small boutique somewhere along the Left Bank in Paris.

Yet I didn’t want to put Liberty back in her box. Her colors happened to work incredibly well with the grey, black and linen in my living room and she was a perfect square shape, so it seemed only right that her next life would be as a pillow.

While I’ve made many a pillow cover, this would be the first in a lightweight silk, which can be a bit finicky to work with. Once the silk was fused to interfacing it became much easier to handle.

Materials You’ll Need:
-A scarf (of course)
-An equal size piece of fusible interfacing, appropriate weight for applying to silk
-A complimentary fabric (in color, size and weight) for the back side of the pillow, with no stretch
(a cotton twill works really well)
-A pillow form (go with feather for plumpness)
-Thread
-A zipper (I prefer the “invisible” style like the one shown above)
-Pins
-Tailor’s chalk or pencil for marking the fabric
-Fabric Shears
-A seam ripper
-A clean, flat surface for cutting
-An dry iron for fusing the interfacing and silk scarf together
-A sewing machine, with a zipper foot

Now I could continue to write out in explicit detail how to make the pillow cover, however I’ve found a few videos which accomplish this task better than words can. This demonstration by Brett Bara is really easy to follow. Just remember to fuse an interlining to the backside of your scarf before picking up where Brett begins.