Cheater Pillow

I have been seeing lots of lovely pillows popping up everywhere this holiday season as gift suggestions, and I am always jealous because they are so adorable, but fall into that category of stuff that I just can’t mess with because I don’t have a sewing machine. (Other “stuff that I can’t mess with” are projects that require power tools, a printer, an assumption that there is spare wood lying around, etc. I am happy for these limitations because they reduce the number of projects I can obsess with completing. But I digress.) Luckily, I recently thought of a loophole for my pillow dilemma, and was able to make this fabulous pillow with no sewing involved!

I had a large pillow sham that I wasn’t using, and this summer I cut up several pieces and framed them for some cheap art for our bedroom. The top half of the pillow sham was still intact, so I grabbed my handy stamp and fabric paint, and stamped a pattern across the top when I was stamping my burlap last week.

I trimmed the edges so that they were straight, and then turned to my old friend, HeatnBond. I bonded (I don’t really know what you call this), about 3/4 of the way across my pillow with this stuff, waited for it to cool and then flipped it and stuffed it.

I then bonded the last portion of the pillow. It was not easy to iron this part, especially while holding back the stuffing to make sure that it wouldn’t melt. But I still maintain that it was faster and easier (for me, anyway) then sewing.

This just left the very end openings,

which I, uh, sewed shut.

and they looked just fine.

The pillow had this decorative ruffled edge, which still shows on three sides, and since I closed up the bottom of the pillow, I didn’t need to worry about replicating this for uniformity or anything. Perfect.

I haven’t been able to work on the blocks any more since I’ve been trying to finish up a few Christmas presents over the last week. Luckily I will be able to show them off next week, I can’t wait to give them away!

I’m linking up to Girl Creative, Metamorphasis Monday, Make it for Monday, A Soft Place to Land, Today's Creative Blog and Show and Tell.