Not so long ago, I was in Ikea. Now one of the coolest things about Ikea is that they have some great “line art” designs in both fabric and modern design. While I was there, they had some beautiful tea towels (hand towels) for sale. They were simplistic trees with nice retro colored leaves in browns, yellows, blues and burgundy. It reminded me of something out of the 1970’s.

The thing is that as good heavy cotton fabric, I thought they were just too pretty to take out and use as tea towels / dish towels. So, after a couple days of thinking about it, I pulled them out of the bag and ironed them flat. I decided that they would make great throw pillow covers.

Thus began the remake. I measured out the length of the pillows and cut some light tan (actually recycled from old sheets) fabric that I had saved. It came up just about 2/3 of the way on the towel itself. I then sewed it with french seams (front side to front side – sew, turn inside out and sew) around the edges:

Then, I attached 2 buttons on the reverse of a couple pillows, before deciding that I liked the velcro look better for the other two. Inserting the pillow I already had from the sofas – the total time spent was an afternoon for 4 pillow covers that can be washed, removed, and are totally match my decor.

How sweet are these little “tree of life” throw pillows from a cotton towel? And the best part? It cost me about 2 Euro a pillow.