I have bought throw pillows for forty years. These are the first ones I have ever written a letter about.
I have bought throw pillows for forty years. These are the first ones I have ever written a letter about.
Six things I have noticed since an open house in Junction, from a woman who has lived with the same tired sofa for twenty years and never once wrote to a store about a cushion.
Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read
Let me tell you who is talking before I tell you anything else. I am Peggy, I am 63, and I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband Frank. Frank’s cousin Wade goes to a little church out in Junction, and this fall they got a new pastor. On the second Sunday in October the church held a welcome open house at the parsonage, and Frank and I drove out with a pan of King Ranch chicken on the floorboard, through all that Hill Country with the sumac just starting to turn.
The cushions I am writing about come from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now, and it turns out they do more than clothes. They make printed cushion covers, twenty-five designs of them. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
I first saw them in that parsonage living room. The sofa there belongs to the church, a brown plaid thing that has outlived three preachers and looks it. But sitting on it were two cushions I could not stop looking at. One was a tall green saguaro with desert flowers all around it on cream, inside a deep green border. The other was a turquoise and rust southwestern pattern that looked like it belonged on a ranch porch. I had the new pastor’s wife down as having brought them from wherever they lived before, something handed down. So while we were drying the casserole dishes in the parsonage kitchen, I asked her, plainly. Her name is Merilee. She laughed and said, “It is the church’s sofa, Peggy. I cannot recover it, but I can change the covers.” Read on.
Mine, in Frank’s old armchair by the front window. That chair has never looked so pleased with itself.
Here is what forty years of buying throw pillows has taught me. They come in two piles. In the first pile are the fancy ones from the department store, with fringe and beads and a price tag that makes you scared to lean on them. In the second pile are the plain beige squares that match everything and disappear into the sofa the minute you set them down. I have owned plenty of both, and my living room has looked exactly the same for twenty years.
I thought a room only changed when you bought new furniture. It turns out a room changes when you change what is sitting on it.
The day they came. Just the covers, flat as a pair of pillowcases, which is exactly what the boutique said I would get.
I ordered mine from the motel in Junction that night, and I have lived with them for a few weeks now. Going by those weeks, it comes down to six things, and I will give them to you plainly.
It changes a room without changing the furniture
Merilee had it right. She cannot touch that plaid sofa, and I will not get Frank to part with ours this side of the grave. Two new covers did what twenty years of beige cushions never managed. People walk into my living room now and ask if we painted. We did not. I put a cactus on the armchair and one on the bench in the back hall, and the whole house looks like somebody who lives in Texas lives in it.
On the cedar bench by the back door, where Frank leaves his boots and his hat.
Changed my whole living room for about the price of a lunch out. My husband asked me if we got a new couch.
Bonnie K., Mountain HomeThe picture is printed, and printed well
I want to be plain about this, because the photographs are so detailed you might wonder. These are printed covers. Merilee told me so in the kitchen, and the boutique says it right on the page. What surprised me is how good the printing is. On the cactus one you can see every little flower, the pale tips on the saguaro’s arms, the tiny red bloom over the barrel cactus, the vine climbing up the right side. Nothing is fuzzy. The boutique says the colors are made to stay bright through the wash, and so far mine have.
The colors are just as bright as the picture and the print is sharp. Nothing blurry about it.
Faye D., StonewallThere is a design that looks like where you live
The second cover I ordered was the one from the parsonage sofa, the Desertweave. Turquoise, rust and a deep chocolate brown, with diamonds and zigzags like an old trading post blanket. It lives on our porch swing now, and in the late afternoon it is the same colors as the hills. There are twenty-five designs in all, and they are not all Texas. There are roses and wildflowers and deer and a longhorn skull and a navy Christmas tree. But if you have ever wanted your house to look like the place you actually live, this is where they shine.
The Desertweave on our porch swing. Frank says it is the first thing on that porch that matches the sunset.
Finally a pillow that looks like Texas and not like a hotel lobby.
Verna T., SisterdaleIt is the cover only, so you use the pillows you already have
This is the part I want you to read twice. You are buying the cover, not the pillow. There is no insert in the package, and the boutique says so plainly. That suited me fine, because I had a closet full of perfectly good pillows wearing tired covers. The back is a plain white envelope, so you just fold the old pillow and slip it in. No zipper to snag and no buttons to sew back on. If you do not have pillows to put in them, buy a plain insert anywhere and you are set.
Slipped right over the old pillows I already had. That envelope back is so easy.
Nadine P., VanderpoolThree sizes, so it fits what you have
They come in 16 inch, 18 inch and 22 inch squares. Before I ordered I went round the house with Frank’s tape measure and measured every pillow we own, which I recommend. Our sofa pillows were 18 inch and the one on Frank’s chair was 16. The 22 inch is a good big one for a bed or a deep sofa corner. Match the cover to the pillow and it sits nice and neat.
Ordered the 18 inch for the sofa and the 16 for my reading chair. Both fit just right.
Opal R., DossYou can change them with the seasons, and they make the easiest present
Merilee had a Christmas one folded in the parsonage closet already, and I copied her. Mine is the Poinsettiahaven, three red poinsettias on pine branches with little red ornaments, and it is going on the guest bed the week my sister Sue comes for Christmas. The rest of the year it folds flat in the linen closet and takes up no more room than a pillowcase. I also sent a cactus one to my daughter in Belton, and she called me the day it came.
The Poinsettiahaven on the guest bed, ready early. I could not wait for Sue.
I change mine out for Christmas and Easter now. They fold up flat in the linen closet.
Jolene M., Willow CityThese covers, against the pillows in the store
You can keep living with the same cushions you have had for years, like I did. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Fancy and fussy, or plain and forgettable
A whole new pillow every time you want a change
Look like they came from a hotel lobby
Take up a shelf in the closet
The same room year after year
Bright, sharp printed pictures you want to look at
Slip over the pillows you already own
Designs that look like where you live
Fold flat in a drawer between seasons
A new room for the price of a cover
About the price
The 16 inch cover is $34.95. It was $70.00. The 18 inch is $36.95 and the 22 inch is $38.95, down from $74.00 and $78.00. I will be honest, when I saw that I read the whole page twice looking for the catch. The only catch is the one I already told you, that it is the cover and not the pillow. It came with free shipping and it was the design in the pictures.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that each cover is made to order, and the Christmas designs are the first to go once the weather turns. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have paid more than $70.00 for one fringed pillow that went straight to the back of the closet, so $34.95 to make my armchair look new was an easy yes.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
If your living room has looked the same for longer than you care to say, this is where I would start. Measure your pillows, pick a picture you like, and take a look before the fall sale ends, because once it is gone, it is gone. And if you are ever in a parsonage in Junction and you see a cactus on a plaid sofa, that is Merilee’s, and she is the reason my house looks new.
Peggy
THE CUSHION COVER COLLECTION
- Twenty-five printed designs
- Bright, sharp print made to stay colorful
- Plain white envelope back, no zipper
- Cover only, insert not included
- 16, 18 and 22 inch sizes
- Folds flat between seasons
- Free shipping
Fall sale on now, half off. Once this run is gone, it is gone.