Blame it On Woolies!

Pillowcases from Woolworths
The last time Dave and I were in South Africa, we bought two gorgeous pillowcases at Woolworths.

As I recall there were Queen-size duvet covers and sheets to match but we didn’t buy them because, for one thing, we have a King-size bed and, for another, we each sleep with our own single duvet.

Yes, long ago, we learned that we both got a better night’s sleep if we were each buried in our own little cloud of feathers and not fighting over bedding!

The plan was to buy Single (called Twin in the US) duvet covers to match when we arrived home. But therein lay the problem. American couples, for the most part, seem to like playing tug of war with the covers. Plain Twin duvet covers in grown-up colours — that is, those not festooned with Dora the Explorer or Spongebob Squarepants — are very hard to come by here. 100% cotton, plain duvet covers in grown-up colors are even harder to find. Every time I found a beige Twin cover, it was either too pinky-beige or too greeny-beige, and if it happened to be almost the right colour, the fabric wasn’t plain cotton. Either too silky or too suede-ey.

So after two and a half years of hunting, I finally threw in the towel and drove down to my local fabric store.

SewingLet me stop here a moment to admit that any sane person would have tucked those pillowslips way up high in the spare room cupboard and conveniently forgotten about them. And kept sleeping with the burgundy-coloured covers that don’t match anything.

Crazy, I know. And very, very stubborn.

At the fabric store I found the perfect beige in a plain quilting cotton. There was also a rust that was close to that used in the pillowcases, so I decided to add a block of rust to the top and bottom of each cover.

Only catch was that the width of the beige bolt was significantly narrower than the width that I needed. So I had to buy double the fabric and add a seam up the middle of each cover. (Kelli, I have lots of leftovers. Decent hunks that you could probably use for lining bags or aprons! Lemme know if you want them.)

Again, a less obstinate person would probably have left the store and donated the pillowcases to charity.

Finished duvet cover and pillowcaseLong story short, once I got sewing, the covers went pretty quickly. I added a hand-embroidered circle sun motif to the bottom of each cover to match the motifs on the pillowslips and — voila! — twin duvet covers to match our lovely Woolies slips! The cotton is fresh and soft on the skin and they do match the pillowcases very nicely. Here is a link to a bigger picture in our Flickr pool.

Stubbornness is definitely one of my faults but in cases like this, I like to think of it as persistence. Persistence that pays off!

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Posted: May 9th, 2008

Categories: Living abroad, Home & decorating


7 Responses to “Blame it On Woolies!”

  1. hanlie says:
    May 9th, 2008 at 8:17 pm

    Very nicely done! I don’t know if I could live on a different continent than my mother… She’s the seamstress in the family and sews most of my clothes! If we emigrate I’ll have to take lessons from her!

  2. Jenty says:
    May 9th, 2008 at 10:04 pm

    Oh you are clever!!

  3. Jennifer says:
    May 10th, 2008 at 4:39 am

    Wow! It was worth the work and the wait. What a sophisticated look. Very nicely done.

  4. Georgie says:
    May 11th, 2008 at 7:07 pm

    Stunning!Looks wonderful.
    Well worth the wait.

  5. OMSH says:
    July 9th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    You did excellent! FABULOUS, really!

  6. alison says:
    July 12th, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    I admire your persistence in having just the right bed-coverings. If you ever are looking (in the future) for solid color cotton duvet covers, check out IKEA; I’ve purchased plain duvet covers there more than once.

  7. Sue | Design says:
    April 28th, 2009 at 10:30 am

    Wow, to have that kind of patients, well done to you, and you did a fantastic job, I for one would have given up.
    I have just come across your blog and have just enjoyed reading through some of the posts.
    So thanks

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