"On the Cheap" Pillow Shams

Yesterday I bought a new quilt for my bedroom in the new house (which will have gray walls). I wanted to find something that incorporated both gray and black because I want to use both colors throughout the room. The quilt was only $30 - but each matching sham was $13. Seems crazy to me.

So I decided to make my own. I already had both the fabrics I used to make the shams, a gray pattern and a satiny gray solid. I picked them up half off the red-tag clearance price at Joann's, probably totaling $5. There wasn't enough of either fabric to make two full shams alone so I put one piece on the front and the other on the back. Here is the finished product:

I am pretty proud of how it turned out. To make the sham I just took a sham I already had and laid it out on my fabric. Then I cut 1/2 inch around it (for seam allowance) and drew a dotted line 3 inches from all the edges with dress making chalk. I used the dotted line as a guide to sew the rectangle the pillow actually goes in (this is part of what makes it a sham and not just a pillow case). The other difference is the back of the sham. Here is a picture of the back of the one I made.

To do this I just cut a little more fabric than half of the front so there would be enough for the two back pieces to overlap and create the flap effect.

Here are the shams on my bed with the new quilt. And below that is a picture I took yesterday showing the two fabrics I used on the shams along with an awesome velvety pink. I will eventually make more pillows out of the pink to break up all the gray.