Beautifying a Boring Pillow

Thanks for Sharing!

I’ve recently been “trying” out sewing ~ with a machine that is.  I really don’t know how or what I’m doing, but I wanted to recover my pillows in the family room – so I figured I’d give it a try.  My mom gave me her old sewing machine, so I had no more excuses.

I had leftover fabric from the family room curtains.  I measured the pillow forms and added an inch.  Then inside outed the fabric… pinned it together & sewed 3 sides… it was a bit scary trying to get the hang of the speed with my foot pedal.  But I did it.  I hand sewed the 4th side after stuffing with the pillow form.  So this is what I had…

Nice, but not super cute!  I saw this adorable felt pillow adorned with rosettes and my brain started to spin… hum???

I had left over material from making the pillow cover.  I started cutting circles like a madwomen.  I made the circles about 2-3 inches.  They weren’t all the same size and they certainly weren’t perfectly round.

I then folded them in half like this…

and then again in half like this…

Then I took a needle with my almost matching brown thread and stitched it about 1/2 inches up from the bottom… about where my nail is pointing to above.

I’m sure there’s some technical sewing term to better describe this, but like I said… I don’t sew… so I went from front to back, back to front and then once more front to back.  Then I sewed the rosette right onto the pillow.  I stitched it on about 3 times, tying it off.

My plan was to make a rosette stripe.  Halfway through I ran into a problem ~ I ran out of material…oops!

I put on my thinking cap & remembered this old skirt I had.

I wore this skirt pre-3-kiddo days.  Even if I could get it over my hips it is WAY to short for a mom of 3 to wear doing any “mom” duties. 🙂  I had put the skirt in a garage sale pile, but I figured ~ why not ~ just use the material.

Here the pillow is all beautified!

And of course a close-up!

This was such a fun project… I want to ruffle everything right now.

Update… I’m joining The Shabby Chic Cottage for Transformation Thursday!