Thursday, October 6, 2016

From Placemat to Pillow



Lilly and I were out shopping the other day and made a stop at World Market. While I didn't wind up getting many things (I think I always over-hype WM in my head and when I actually go its sort of a let down...same thing happens with Trader Joes), I saw some really cute placemats and immediately thought back to one of my earliest pins. I remember reading that Bower Power post back before Pinterest existed and I had to save bookmarks to my favorite blog posts. Kids today will never know what that was like!

DIY pillows from Bower Power
I've been wanting some new pillows for my living room for awhile (if you look closely you can see where our dog Mickey has scratched at the square pillows that came with the couch - there are loose threads everywhere), but considering we might be moving, I didn't want to spend a ton of money when we aren't sure what our next living room will look like. These placemats were $4.99 each, and I knew I could make 2 pillows for under $20. A quick stop at Michaels on the way home for some fiberfill and I had two new throw pillows that afternoon.

All you have to do is use a seam ripper or small scissors to open a hole between the two layers of fabric, stuff with fiberfill, and sew it closed.




I used an 8 oz bag of fiberfill for each but probably should have opened a third bag and stuffed them a little more. Also, my stitch work wasn't my best, but its at the bottom and you wouldn't notice unless you looked real close.





When I went to look on the WM website to link the placemats, I couldn't find them but I did see throw pillows in this pattern available for purchase. For $20 that would have been a lot easier, but I was able to make 2 pillows for about $15 ($10 for the mats and $5 for the fiberfill w/coupon).

I am thinking of ordering some new pillow covers for the square came-with-the-couch pillows from etsy, but they would need to be thick to cover the existing pattern. Anyone have any favorite shops for pillow covers? I am thinking of maybe some seasonal covers like this or this and switching them out for Christmas.

I actually have a couple more placemats I bought years ago for the same purpose. Since they were for the office couch (the old army green microfiber monster Joe and I first purchased together probably almost 10 years ago) I just never made it a priority. Now that I have some extra fiberfill maybe I will get those over with this weekend - stay tuned!


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