Sew Pillows from Placemats and Napkins

Hey y’all, today I’m showing you how to sew pillows with some unusual fabric sources – placemats and cloth napkins. Do you ever wander around Target? Like especially in the summer when your kids are bored and you just needed one thing but then you kept walking up and down aisles because it’s air conditioned and hey, at least your kids weren’t whining and you’re getting your daily steps in? Well, it was on one such trip that I noticed this embroidered gray placemat and thought to myself, “I should make something with that.” I knew it was too over the top to buy a set of these and use them as placemats, even if we did use placemats. Though sometimes I think we should – especially Bean. That kid is a mess at every meal.

Anyway, the anti-clutter part of me overruled my fabric stasher and made me put the placemat back (at the time I was thinking tote bag or clutch, but I really don’t need another one of either of those). But when we finished building this couch and I decked it out with the turquoise seat cushions (affiliate link, also from Target) it looked a little bare, and while I contemplated pillows, the image of that placemat popped back into my head.

I also wanted some 18 inch decorative pillows because I already had the inserts, and while shopping at World Market for some other accessories (like the blanket on the back of the couch) I noticed that 1) cloth dinner napkins are already the perfect size and 2) World Market had a great variety of napkins to choose from. Since I am, as the Coach says, allergic to matching anything, this was perfect for me. So Tater and I spent the better part of half an hour mixing and matching napkins to make these pillows.

Since all of these were intended for our outdoor screened patio, and since I knew that Sadie (our Basset Hound) would not be entirely trustworthy about leaving these alone, I wanted to make sure the covers had zippers so I could wash them as needed.

With the napkins I bought two for each pillow, because I needed a front and a back. But since the placemat was obviously two pieces of fabric stitched together, I just took my seam ripper to it.

Once I had two pieces of fabric, the process was the same for the placemat and the napkin.  I stitched a zipper to each side of the fabric; since the edges were already finished on the napkins and placemat, I just topstitched the zipper into place.

After the zipper, I sewed around the side seams with the wrong sides of the fabric together, folding the ends of the zipper tape in. This left a little bit of a a decorative edging around each pillow, and it meant that these pillows went together SUPER fast!