What is it about coming home after being away that is so comforting? You may be familiar with that certain feeling you get when you arrive home: when it feels like just yesterday that you were home, but in reality it’s been weeks or even months that you were away. Our senses seem to absorb all the familiar elements of home at once, and for me, it’s…
–The unique smell of home, which is maybe a combination of my mom’s perfume, my dad’s aftershave, and coffee brewing.
–The comfy feeling of sinking my toes into a rug and curling up on the couch with a blanket.
–The familiar sounds of home, like the hum of the refrigerator and the birds outside.
–The sight of mementos and pictures.
I love getting this feeling every time I come home during break from school! And a lot of times when I come home after rough weeks of tests and projects, I think I can maybe relate to how the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) might have felt when he returned home: I would imagine he probably felt weary, burnt out, and in need of hugs :)
With all the familiarity welcoming me home, I’ve had to adjust a little bit because my room at home is no longer the room I remember from high school. Since having my own apartment, my room at home has been revamped into a bit of an office/spare bedroom. It's been given a fresh coat of sandy colored paint on the walls, plus some blue, green, and beige accessories have been added to give the room a calm beachy feeling.
During spring break earlier this year, I took on the task of creating some custom pillow shams to match the quilt on the bed. The material used was a second reversible quilt comforter to match our existing comforter. After doing a little math, my mom and I discovered it was cheaper if we used a matching comforter as fabric to create our own pillow shams, rather than buying the pre-made option. This way we got a custom look too!
Just a side note, my measurements are all done with a little guesswork- rarely do I take the time to be as precise as I should!
I started by laying out the quilt with the pillow on top of it. The width of the pillow was doubled to accommodate the pillow’s dimensions, and the fabric was then cut out.
I think the trickiest part of this whole project was making a seam so that you would only see finished edges on both of the reversible sides. I started by ironing the hem over. I believe I did about a 1-inch hem to allow for the thickness and layers of the fabric.
As you can see in the picture, I then aligned the edges so that they hooked onto each other.
This was then pinned into place.
After pinning the whole pillow length, I sewed two straight lines- one on each edge. It may help to sew the first line along the visible edge first; then reverse the pillow and sew the other edge.
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The outside end edges of the pillow were finished with extra wide bias tape, which was pinned into place and then sewn.
Since we wanted the pillows to have buttons on all of the reversible sides, twice the number of buttons were used. So, instead of 4 buttons, we used 8. In the diagram, the button placement is visible.
Using the sewing machine, button holes were sewed onto ONE side of the pillow sham only (see the button hole on the right in the picture below).
On the opposite side of the pillow sham, two buttons were sewn back to back (see picture).
Finish by stuffing the pillow sham with the body pillow and securing the buttons. You can reverse it at any time to change up the look too!
So, I do feel a little sad to be leaving the comforts of home to return to summer school. But it’s nice knowing what and who are always awaiting for me for whenever I come home!
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