They say that the easiest way to jazz up any room is with a decorative throw pillow.  I love this idea because it is easy, it does make a difference in making a place feel homey, and there are so many possibilities.  In this week's video tutorial, I will show you how to create a simple pillow sham so that you can save yourself some decorative bucks.

As a kid, one summer, my friends and I were looking for a way to make extra money in order to go to the movies.  My best friend's grandmother donated a box of buttons toward our cause.  Even a box full of buttons was exciting because many of them were old and unique looking.  Unfortunately, buttons don't grant admission to the movies.  Our brilliant idea, at the time, was to make the most amazingly, fantastic tiny pillows, cover them with buttons and then sell them door to door to our neighbors.  The idea was genius, because who wouldn't jump at the chance to buy miniature pillows covered in mismatched buttons?  As you can imagine, we were way ahead of our time in our vision of decorative pillows and I'm sure they sell something similar now in a world market import store.

So we went into production.  My mother made the pillows forms for us, (as this was before I even knew how to sew), and us kids got to it stuffing the pillows and sewing as many buttons as we could fit on it.  We knew we had a winning product as we carefully packed them in a basket and then granted the neighbors the privilege of possibly owning one pillow masterpiece for a very reasonable price.  Unfortunately, our pillow business lasted only about one day as we made just enough (maybe less than enough) for Mom to take us to the movies. And, anyways, once we accomplished our goal, we kind of lost interest.

I'd like to believe that my sense of pillow style has improved since then and now believe that simple is usually best.  A bit of lace, a wool felt flower and, voila!  A stylish pillow.  One can even do a regular pillow instead of a sham.  I actually prefer shams because even if I stuff and stuff, it never seems to stay as fluffy as I would like.  Commercial pillow forms always seem to stand up a little better and it saves me stuffing and vacuuming time.  Regardless of the type of pillow you do, this is a simple framework that you can easily modify to take your own spin on it.  And, if instead of a flower, you want to cover it in buttons, who am I to say no?  I just don't recommend taking a nap on it.