Sewing Your Pillow
You want to leave a space for stuffing, so stitch the pillow starting about 1/3 of the way from the end on the short, open side and sew around the edge, following the seams as much as you can, and finish about 1/3 of the way from the other corner of the unfinished short edge.. The idea is to have a finished pillow with a “flange” around the border that’s the same width as the original seams on your valence/dish towel/hemmed fabric. My pillow has about a 1″ flange, but yours can be smaller or bigger, depending on how you want your finished product to look.
The photo above shows my pillow all stitched around with a nice-sized opening that’s ready for stuffing.
Next >> Stuffing Your Pillow
So funny to see this today. I’ve been collecting my tiny scraps to use for pillows since I saw a friend collecting them at the quilt store to make dog beds for the animal shelter!
If you really want to get serious about ammassing a large amount of scraps in a short time, check with a local quilters guild or quilter friends. You may even be able to find a quilters retreat center if you can have a special bin for scraps only that quilters can put their scraps in.
Do you think you could also add rags like worn out undershirts or socks that are cut up?
Yes! Thank you! I was planning on stuffing a few pillows with old t-shirt scraps and wondering if I was crazy…
Curious as to why you didn’t just launder the scraps with the bugs in them?
You could choose to do that, if you wanted to. I don’t think there would be any harm to you in it. You’d likely want to be very mindful of the temperature at which you’re drying your scraps and thread bits, however–it’s surprising how durable insect eggs can be.
Freezing your scraps for a good period of time (say a few days to a week) will kill nearly everything. For extra measure soak in a 50/50 vinegar water wash for another day or two. Then launder, highest temp if possible. I’ve done this with things that moths or silverfish have gotten into and have never seen them return as a result of incomplete cleaning.
We made some of these years ago when my scraps were getting out of control! We called them brick pillows because the scraps make the pillows so much heavier than the polyfill.
I finally found an article about how to use scraps for stuffing pillows! Thank you so much!!
What’s to prevent a pillow full of bugs if they were able to infiltrate your scrap stash?
I’ve recently been making a quilt style blanket out of tshirts and after cutting those tshirts i wondered what i could do with all the scraps. This is the perfect DIY to use those scraps!