easy peasy zippers & pillows

One of my goals for this year is to makeover my living room. 

So if all goes well, this would be the first of several posts in a little makeover series. Fingers crossed!

There happened to be a hockey game on today, so with the boys occupied I headed into my sewing room to make some new pillow covers for my couch.

As much as I'd love to have all creamy white pillows, I have two boys, so obviously pillows should be the colour of dirt. The plan (eventually) is to change up the wall colour from a taupey shade of dirt to a pale gray shade of dirt so I thought this fabric would work well.

So here's the before picture of the pillow that came with the couch. 
And although it conceals dirt well, it's not really working for me

before

When it comes to sewing, I'm all about doing it the easy way. So I bought one of these bad boys:

invisible zipper foot

It's a presser foot that allows me to sew on 'invisible zippers.' These kind of zippers cost a bit more but are SO worth it because they are so easy to install.
And, if you don't believe me, I'll show you just how I did it!

First I ironed and cut my fabric to size. 
I opened the zipper and pinned one side of it to the edge of the fabric with right sides together. I made sure that the very top of the zipper was lined up with the fabric too.

This zipper foot has two grooves underneath it - one on either side of the needle. I lined up the zipper so that the needle would stitch just to the outside of the track. I sewed it on, starting from the top of the zipper, working my way down to the bottom.

Zipper fits into the right groove when stitching to the left of it like this.

My finger is just out of view here, but I was able to get the needle even closer to the zipper tracks by pushing down on it and rolling it flat (as seen at the bottom of the picture). 

Once I stitched to the end of the zipper, I lined up the other half of the track the same way. I stitched down the side, beginning at the top of the zipper again.

Because this is an invisible zipper, there was no need to top stitch. 

Zipper = done!

Can you see the zipper?!

To finish off the pillow cover I just had to pin it with right sides together and sew it closed. 

One tip if you would like to try this too: pin the pieces together with the zipper closed, but don't forget to open it before sewing (it makes it hard to open). Ask me how I know that!

And voila!

Now how long do you think these pillows will last with my two boys around?! Hopefully long enough to get the living room painted.