Pillow Talk

When I think of my daughter at three years old, I picture her wearing her favorite Gymboree sweater.  The colors of the sweater were her favorite colors at that time, which coincidently... or not, are the same colors as her room.  I love pillows and got to thinking that I could make her favorite sweater into a pillow for her bed.

It was much easier than you would think.  I used a sewing machine, but you could easily hand sew the pillow.  I didn't want to cut the sweater so instead I pulled the sleeves inside the sweater which left me with a square.  I then buttoned up the sweater and turned the sweater inside out.  I simply sewed the neck, the two arm holes and the bottom.  I unbuttoned the sweater and turned it back to the right side.  I inserted a pillow form and buttoned up the sweater.  In putting in the pillow form I "hid" the arms behind the pillow form.

Since the sweater was a size 3, it worked very well as it was the same dimensions as a small pillow form.  But why stop at my daughter's room.  My son also had a favorite shirt.

His "Miners" jersey worked well too.  I didn't have those handy buttons, so instead I came up with a different solution.  First I started the same way by pulling the sleeve inside the shirt (again I didn't want to damage the shirt by cutting off the sleeves).  I then turned the shirt inside out.  This shirt had a v-neck that I had to deal with.  I was able to cover the v-neck by using the sleeves and hand sewing the "wrist" sections together.

I then hand sewed the sleeves to the back of the neck.  I decided velcro would be the best way to close this pillow.  So, I turned the shirt back to the right side, left about an inch on the bottom of each side for the velcro.  I bought the sticky velcro so that there was no sewing involved at all.

Both pillows were easy and took less than a half hour each to complete.

 If you don't want to use a sweater, you could also use a sweatshirt or team jersey to create the same look.  I hope you try this at home.  Please send me photos of your pillows.  I would love to post them.

Judy