Low-sew pillows

I’ve seen a lot of post lately on no-sew pillows that look really cute. I needed a pillow or two for my painted yellow chairs, so I decided to try my own version of the no-sew pillow. I’m calling it a low-sew pillow because I hand-stitched them a little so they’d be more permanent. I used the same ideas though, and stayed far away from my sewing machine!

Low-Sew Pillow No. 1

Years ago I made a bunch of pillow to match my Paris-themed bedroom at my dad’s house. My step mom made me cute pillows and a matching bed skirt, too. On the way home yesterday, I stopped by and grabbed the old pillows to give them a new look so they’d match our yellow chairs perfectly. The first pillow I tackled was this long, cylindrical pillow.

First, I ironed out all of the creases in the fabric and laid the pillow on top. I cut off the excess fabric, leaving enough to wrap around the pillow and then bunch at the edges.

Once I had the fabric cut down to size, I ironed flat the ragged edge that would be exposed on the pillow.

With the edge ironed flat, I pulled the remaining raw edge up over the pillow and stitched a few stitches directly into the pillow to hold it in place.

Then, I folded the nicely ironed side up and over the pillow and did a stitch all the way down the seam. Since I have no plans of this pillow sitting anywhere but on my yellow chairs and I don’t anticipate the chairs themselves getting too much use, I was fine doing a raw stich on the underside of the pillow. If I were to make this pillow for my couch and it was to be tossed around all of the time, I would have stitched this part on a machine so it looked cleaner. Like I said, I am going for a low-sew pillow, so this worked just fine for me. I also really like seeing stitches in some things. I think they look neat.

With the pillow covered lengthwise, it was time to finish the edges. I flipped the pillow vertically so the white pillow underneath the fabric was showing. I placed a stitch in the center of the top of the pillow then started folding the fabric down onto the needle. This gave the pillow a bunched look at both ends. When the fabric had all been bunched, I folded down the top of the last flap of fabric so no raw edges were exposed. I then did a quick stitch to keep that part down. I did this for both ends of the pillow.

Now comes the fun part. I wanted to add an accent to my pillow, so I created a teal flower out of fabric. To do this, I cut eight circles out of my teal fabric and folded each circle into eighths.

Once all of the circles were folded, I stitched them together joining each folded circle at the pointy base. Once all eight were threaded together, I looped back around and put one last stitch into the first circle. That left me with a ring of fabric petals. I started to stitch that onto my pillow, spreading out each petal to give the flower dimension. Once I was happy with how that looked, I sewed a navy button onto the center of my flower. With that, my pillow was complete!

 

So cute, right? I was excited to pop it onto the yellow chair to see how it looked.

Cute, but something was definitely missing. With that, I started on my second low-sew pillow.

Low-Sew Pillow No. 2

For my second pillow, I picked a gray polka-dotted fabric. I also decided to go with a square pillow. I ripped off the cover of an old pillow and got to work.

I did a similar technique as I did with the first pillow, folding the raw fabric up to the center of the pillow and stitching the fabric to the pillow.

Once that was tacked into place, I folded one of the remaining tides and tacked onto the pillow as well.

Looks really nice, huh? For the final flap, I folded all of the raw edges under before folding the flap onto the pillow. I then did a stitch around all of the exposed seams. Once the pillow was all low-sewn into place, I added a big ol’ yellow flower to the top corner using the same technique as on the first pillow.

LOVE IT! Back to the chair!

Adorable, right? I like it so much better with two pillows!

Two pillows down, two to go.

Low-Sew Pillow No. 3

This was the last pillow I made last night — I got all tuckered out after three of them. This one is way different!

I started with a small rectangular pillow.

Like the other pillows, I folded up the long sides and stitched them together.

Now comes the fun part! With the excess fabric, I took up each end of the fabric and tied it into a knot in the center of the pillow.

If the fabric I was using didn’t fray, I could have simply cut off the white edges and went on my merry way. But I chose a fabric that would fray if I left it cut, so I trimmed off the white edges and tucked one half of the bow underneath the left side of the pillow, and the other part of the bow under the right side of the pillow. Then, I tacked down the corners underneath so the stitches were hidden and the edges od the bow wouldn’t pop back out accidentally.

Super cute! But it was missing an accent color. No flower for this pillow — I sewed a yellow buttons on top of the polka dots. Then I decided that was ugly, so I removed all but one little accent button. So cute.

Low-Sew pillow No. 3, complete!

I love my yellow chairs even more with the accent pillows — the pillows do a nice job of toning down the crazy yellow of the chairs.

I also think I’m going to move them chairs upstairs into our gray living room. They look nicer against the gray than they do against the greenish-blue.

Thanks for stopping by!