Glam Your Bed Pillow Sew-Along Week One- The Ribbon Pillow

First, a word about the fabric. Choose your fabric wisely. For these pillows, I recommend a nice, home decor fabric. I was super lucky to find an entire bolt of fabric that I wanted to use at a craft sale, but if you don’t already have a fabric that you want to use, I wouldn’t try to scrap by with cheap fabric.

I choose two types of fabric. One matched the main color that my bed already is, the other is an accent color that coordinated with the main color fabric. If you choose to make all your pillows from the same fabric, you will need 5-6 yards. If you want to make the pillows different colors, then you can break that amount up a a little bit.

The inspiration for all of these pillow was given to me by an article in 2000 Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Magazine. I altered the plans somewhat to fit the materials that I had on hand. I’ve attempted to find a site to link to, but I can’t find one- maybe the magazine is no longer in publication. I don’t know.

Okay- enough housekeeping! Let’s make our first pillow!

We’re starting off light! This week, we’ll create a classy pillow using wide ribbons. This will be the smallest pillow we make. The final size should be around 11 inches.

• Sewing Machine
• Coordinating Thread
• Scissors
• Pins
• 1/2 yard of fabric
• 1/2 yard of fleece or batting (we’ll use half of this for today and half of this for next week’s pillow)
• ?? yards of 1 1/2 inch wide ribbon (you can alter the ribbon widths according to what you have on hand or are able to find)
• ?? yards of 7/8 inch wide ribbon (you can alter the ribbon widths according to what you have on hand or are able to find)
• Fiberfill stuffing

Step One

Begin by cutting your fabric and ribbon.
Fabric: Cut two 11 inch pieces
Batting/fleece: Cut one 11 inch piece
1 1/2 inch ribbon: Cut five 11 inch long pieces
7/8 inch ribbon: Cut five 11 inch long pieces

Step Two

Baste the fleece/batting to the WRONG side of the 11 inch fabric piece. If you are unfamiliar with basting, see the post {Here}. See the above picture for a visual of the fleece basted to the WRONG side of the material piece.

Step Three

Take 5 ribbons- 2 of the smaller ones and 3 of the larger ones. Pin them on the RIGHT side of the fleece basted pillow piece. Space them the same amount apart, alternating sizes.

Step Four

Take the remaining ribbons and do the same thing, but in the opposite direction. Make sure that you weave the ribbons in and out of the ribbons that you pinned in Step Three.

Step Five

With the remaining fabric piece, pin the RIGHT sides of the pillow pieces together.

Step Six

Using a 1/2 inch seam allowance, sew the two pillow pieces together, leaving a 6 inch opening for turning. Remove all pins.

Step Seven

Turn pillow right side out and stuff with fiberfill.

Step Eight

Slip stitch opening closed. Make sure that you catch any ribbon that was left loose in the opening. If you find it too difficult to catch these loose ribbons in the slip stitch, tack them down with a quick stitch prior to slip stitching. If you are unfamiliar with slip stitching, view a quick video tutorial {Here}.

First pillow, down!! I am serious when I say that you can make this in one naptime (provided your little ones still takes a 2 hour nap like mine). Come back next week to see what we will make next. And don’t forget- I want to see your pillows! Feel free to link them at my Things I’ve Done Thursday party, to my Facebook page, or to my blog Flickr page.

Linking to these great parties!