Cute, springy pillowcases for my mom!

Today I made some cute pillowcases for my mom. She is very tiny and frail and spends alot of time in her bed at home. She needed some tiny pillows to help prop her head up to watch her flat screen tv she has mounted on the wall in her bedroom. If you try to buy small pillows at any stores they are usually way to firm and plump for her to get comfortable. She just wanted me to make some pillowcases for the small pillows she has had for ages and are filled with chip foam and are quite lumpy and uncomfortable looking. So I decided to make some new pillows for her to use.

I found out about a neat trick to make the pillow more uniform and flat, not to puffy if you don't want to, on the internet.  The trick is to put a layer of batting on each side of  the inside of the pillow. I tried to cheat a bit and sew the pillow together with the batting, but my serge did not like that. So I ended up sewing the 3 sides of the pillow together leaving one of the short ends open. Then I sewed the batting together in the same way leaving one of the short sides open as well. You then tuck the batting pouch inside the pillow casing smoothing it as you go, then stuff the fiberfill into the batting pouch. This stops the fiberfill from bunching up and causing  it to form lumps.  I found that if you stuff a pillow without any batting the cotton fabric inside is slippery and makes the fiberfill want to bunch up. The batting helps hold the fiberfill where you want it. I slip stitched the batting pouch together to keep everything inside and then serged along the outside edge of the actual pillow.  That side will be inside the pretty pillowcase and won't be seen so I think it works well. I am very pleased with the results. Here are a few pictures

The white pillow is the pillow form I made. Not to puffy and nice and smooth. Looks great in the green pillowcase. But of course a purple one is so pretty too.

The next two pictures are of a small hand vacuum cleaner I got at the sewing festival in Toronto.  It is very small but works really great. Couple of AA batteries and you are good to go. It is really great to get my serger clean because every time you sew there is a lot of lint that gets into the machine and it can be hard to reach to get it out. If you ever see one I recommend you buy one. This one cost about $12.00 which is really reasonable. It works great on computer key boards as well.