The Perfect White Pillows

Adding white throw pillows is a quick, easy way to instantly brighten up a room, couch or chair, but there are so many fun white pillow fabrics and details out there that it can be really, really hard to navigate the sea of choices! Not to mention that like just about every other home decor item out there right now, there’s just so much of the same. Lackluster lookalikes everywhere! Which, as you know, is the opposite of our jam. When we add a decor item to our home, we want to be thrilled! We want to be in love! We want it to be personal and have purpose! We want it to feel like us and be unique to our vision, not just another “thing”.  And after searching and searching for the perfect white pillows to brighten up our beloved “nap couch” (seen in our living room makeover), it finally dawned on us — why not just stop into Calico, find a white fabric we could fall in love with and create the perfect white pillows? Genius!

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And yes, yes we are just slightly obsessed with Calico and no, we’re not afraid to remind you of that over and over again. If you’re not convinced that custom creations with fun fabrics are the home decor trick you need in your life, let this serve as yet another reminder of its awesomeness. Or if you still think going custom is unattainable and intimidating, let this serve as a reminder that it’s absolutely, positively neither of those things. And if you still think you need an endless budget to dream up a beautiful custom creation and have Calico bring it to life, let this serve as a reminder that tiny budget or big, they do it all! And if you’re still not convinced, just shoot us an email, we’ll meet up in the ‘hood and shuttle you down to the Calico store ourselves and make it a party. A project party! Cool? Cool.

OK so back to Project: White Pillows. After searching the interwebs endlessly for the perfect white pillows for the nap couch and seeing the same boring options over and over again, we almost gave up the search. It was just too painful (and uninspiring, to say the least). We were looking for something simple and oversized, with some sort of fun, interesting detail to bring them to life. They couldn’t be overly farmhouse-y or too boho, which automatically nixes the majority of the options out there. And they needed to pair perfectly with the existing white pom pillows we already had on the couch (and loved — they’re just so soft and fun).

So after striking out on the web, we once again realized that we should have started the search at Calico because they have what seems like a million amazing white fabrics of all kinds (bright white, off-white, cream, indoor, outdoor, etc.) and have some really cool, unique trim options that we could throw on there and really kick the “cool” factor up a notch. If you follow us on Instagram and Instagram Stories you know that we proceeded grab about 10 different white fabric samples of all kinds with the help of our favorite ladies at our local Calico here in Phoenix and test them all out on the couch. And for those of you thinking that white pillows sounds like a terribly dirty idea, especially with a dog, rest assured that we contemplated that at length. Luckily Hamlet doesn’t shed and doesn’t go outside at all right now except to go potty (his trachea issues prevent him from going outside in summer), so we don’t have to worry much about that. And the nap couch really is only used for just that — napping. So we didn’t have to put durability at the top of our list of priorities… for this particular project.

So why the obsession with adding these oversized white pillows to the nap couch, you ask? The lack of windows and natural light in our living space can make it a little bit dark, so we’re constantly looking for ways to brighten it up. Emphasis on the constantly. Not to mention that although we love our insanely comfy chenille, wheat-colored “nap couch” more than life itself, it needs some bright white accents to keep it from looking dingy, for lack of a better word. That wheat color can be really, really good or really, really lame, depending on what you do with it in our opinion!

So which fabric did we choose? After throwing all of the swatches on the couch and trying them out in all kinds of light, the fabric that we absolutely fell in love with and couldn’t stop coming back to was a fabric style called “Origin” in the color “Bleached”. That exact style isn’t on the Calico website, but you can just stop in to your local Calico or call to order a swatch if you love it as much as we do! The fabric is a 71% Cotton/29% Linen blend and categorized as a homespun, solid look. Homespun is a loosely woven fabric made from homespun yarn, which is basically a casual, comfortable, soft spun yarn — so pretty much everything we love in our home decor. It’s such a cozy fabric with a really beautiful, interesting weave, which is probably why we were so drawn to it! And after seeing the brush fringe jute trim we used for the pillows on another pillow in the Calico store, we’d been dying to use it for a project, and the moment finally arrived! It’s just so cool on these pillows, isn’t it? 

So there you have it guys! Project: White Pillows was a complete success and we seriously couldn’t love the size, fabric or trim more. They’re exactly what the nap couch needed to really shine, don’t you think? If you love the white fabric we used, the cool fringe trim, or the whole combo we created for these custom pillows, but haven’t dipped your toes into the Calico waters before and need a help getting started, just shoot us an email and we’ll get you dialed in with the amazing team at Calico so you can get your own nap couch outfitted with the perfect white pillows, too! 

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A huge thank you to Calico, a brand we love, for providing the product for this project.