Home › House Furnishing and Decorating › House Furnishing and Decorating: Pillows

House Furnishing and Decorating: Pillows

Feathers for Beds and Pillows. - The best feathers for this purpose are live geese feathers or other feathers plucked from the live birds; but chicken, goose, or duck feathers may be preserved and used for beds or pillows by putting all the soft feathers together in a barrel as they are picked from the birds after scalding. Leave the barrel open to the sun and rain, simply covering it with an old screen to prevent the feathers from blowing about.

Or purchase the feathers in quantity from the nearest poulterer and purify them yourself. Thus you can obtain plenty of feathers for pillows and feather beds at very little expense.

Feather Pillows. - Feathers are open to the same objections when used in pillows as in feather beds. By conforming to the shape of the head they prevent ventilation and tend to overheat the scalp. This weakens it and may lead to premature baldness or other affliction. Curled hair should be substituted for feathers whenever possible.

To Fill Feather Pillows. -To transfer feathers from an old feather bed to pillow ticks, or from one pillow tick to another, open a small part of the seam in the tick containing the feathers, draw over it the opening in the tick to be filled, and tack it to the full tick with basting thread, using large stitches. Feathers can then be shaken from one tick to the other without the white fluff getting about.

Remove the basting threads and pin the openings together until you have time to stitch them firmly. This can be done in such a way as not to lose a single feather.

To Make Pillow Cases. - Pillow slips and bolster cases usually give out first. at the corners from being hung on the line with clothespins and from the impact of irons against the sewed ends. Hence, by leaving both ends of the case open, you can distribute the wear over it all and double its life.

Such cases are also much easier to iron. Both ends may be trimmed with lace or insertion, and two or three buttons and buttonholes may be left at each end to button the pillow in.

Pillows thus trimmed will not need pillow shams.

To Protect Ticks. - To protect mattresses and pillow cases from becoming soiled make covers for them of unbleached cotton cloth or any suitable washable material, cut the cloth to measurements of the mattress and pillows, and finish one side or end with buttons and buttonholes, so that the cover can be easily slipped off and cleaned when necessary. Or the mattress protector may be tied on with tape. Bed linen often falls short of covering the mattress completely while in use, hence the extra slip is needed, especially to protect from the dust the under side of the mattress. These slips can be removed and laundered twice a year or oftener when housecleaning; the pillow covers may be removed oftener if desired.

Ticking treated in this way will be fresh and clean at the end of a dozen years' hard usage, when otherwise it would be so worn and soiled as to be unfit for use. A dozen or two yards of cheap material will make cases for all the ticks in an ordinary household.

Or old sheets, pillow cases, or wornout garments may be utilized for this purpose. Cloth flour sacks make excellent pillow covers. Of course, the usual bed linen will be needed in addition to these.

Mattress Top.-A soft top for a husk or excelsior mattress may be made of old cotton or woolen blankets that have outworn their original use.

Place between the blankets several thicknesses of cotton batting and tie the same as for comforters.