Mistreating Pillows

So over at the Nesting Place, the Nester is hosting a "Mistreatment Party." A mistreatment, as most of you know, refers to creating window treatments by using, shall we say, less-than-perfect methods.  I love this concept, even though I have no window treatments in my house (I opted for plantation shutters because all the decisions involving window treatments utterly terrified me).  Sewing?  Not so much.  Glue gunning?  Oh yeah!

In my house, already at my fingertips, I had some old pillow forms, a twin bed skirt that I bought on clearance from a Ballard Designs outlet, and no sewing skills.  What does that equal?  Pillow mistreatments!  I hope I can still qualify for the Nester's party...

I started with "Heat-N-Bond" iron-on adhesive, folded over each edge and ironed them to create straight seams.  As you can see from the photo above, the edges aren't all that straight.  I made two squares, a front and a back, for each pillow.  I use the term "squares" loosely here. More like squares with lots of squiggly lines. 

Then I found black plastic grommets that are supposed to just snap together.  I cut small holes in the corners of my fabric, but with all the folding and gluing going on, the fabric was way too thick for the grommets to snap through.  So I whipped out my glue gun, used it to attach the grommets to the fabric on both sides, and no one will ever know the difference...unless they look at the photo above, which clearly shows you the truth of the matter (and some really poor cutting).

Lastly, I used "Heat-N-Bond" and my iron again to attach the two sides of the pillowcase to each other, with the pillow form in the middle.  I threaded grosgrain ribbons through the grommets to hold the corners together, which is fun because I can change them out whenever I feel like it.  My summer color is lime green, but I think it's time for red because I'm in a fall mood! 

These pillows are far from perfect, but they help me pull the colors together in my dining room, as well as soften it up a bit (literally!).  And paired with my grandmother's chairs?  I love them!  Not sure if the Nester will think they qualify as mistreatments, but I should at least get points for how far I will go to avoid a sewing machine!