Pennant Pillow Cases

Our house is officially decorated for Christmas; it feels festive and cheery. However, besides the tree, there really isn’t much else up. Each year I seem to put out less and less. Most of it has to do with feeling crowded in our small house although a good chunk has to do with the little people who reside here. Since hanging ornaments yesterday, Sweet J has taken it upon himself to rearrange a section of the tree repeatedly and then he launched a plush snowman at the tree. I wasn’t so much worried about the plastic ornaments but the tree itself. What an imp! All the more reason to rely on unobtrusive, low key decorative elements. I’ve always wanted to change out bedding at this time of year. Swap out the basic, everyday bedding for festive bedding, just for fun. Since I’m short on storage, I have to improvise. Enter, the pennant pillow cases.

I am in love with these pillows. They look better than I imagined they would. Immediately after snapping these images, I put my pillow (the one with the two pennant lines) on my bed. And then I stood there and stared at it, smiling like a crazy person. I wondered if my family would notice if I used them all myself. I might beg to have two. The gray one with neutral tones needs to be mine.

The festive flags are sewn on right where the main portion meets the end band. They can be any size and any color or combination of colors. It doesn’t require much and you just might have everything you need in your house already!

Supplies:

-pillow cases
-felt, cut into triangle pendants*, color is your choice
-ribbon

*I cut my pennants into two lengths, 1.5″ and 2″. I did not take time to make every pennant the same size, I like the variance.

**If sewing is not for you, you could do this project using fabric glue. It will require careful, glob-free gluing but if you’re up to it, you won’t miss out if you don’t sew.

Order the little pennants however you’d like in whatever colors you’d like. I laid mine out and then held them in place with a strip of tape. Then when I placed it on the pillow, I pinned them in place. A little tip I learned along the way – as the pennants go through the machine, it’s best to make sure the pennant after the one being sewn is tucked under the one being sewn. The pillow at the far left below shows it best. It passed through the machine from the top down and you can see how they are tucked into each other. It helps keep the little things from folding over.

Once the pennants are secured, I used ribbon to make it look nice and clean. It is a tedious but it looks so good! The width I used was 1/2″ and I sewed a line of color-coordinated stitching on each side of the piece.

So sweet, right? These happy head holders just might stick around beyond the holidays.

To clean, I recommend hand washing them to keep the shape of the pennants and then line dry.