DIY Decorative Throw Pillows

Decorating my home at Christmas time is one of the few times during the year that I go "all out" on the decorations. Sure other times you may find a decoration here or there but at Christmas even by bed gets decorated! This year I splurged and purchased a beautiful poinsettia bedspread complete with bed skirt and shams. To make the bed complete, I wanted decorative throw pillows to go on top. When I started pricing them I about fainted in the store! $40 for ONE twelve inch throw pillow. Mind you it was beautiful, it said "Merry Christmas" but not $40 beautiful! And I wanted more than one, more like three or four. $160 for pillows was NOT in my budget. It was not until I was walking through the dollar store that my eureka moment came. Want to see how to make beautiful throw pillows for less than $8 each? I thought so! ;) Read on.....

Decorative throw pillows do not have to cost a small fortune!

Walking through the seasonal section at my local dollar store I glanced and saw these laying on the shelf. Can you guess what it is?

Place mats can become beautiful pillows!

If you said place mats, you would be correct! There was a pack of two fabric place mats together in this pack for only $4. It was a nice tapestry place mat, just like the throw pillows I had been looking at for $40 each. (Can you sense I can not believe that ONE pillow is $40???? Sorry, moving on!) I quickly picked up two packs. One had holly on it and said Merry Christmas like above and another had a cardinal and poinsettias on them, just like my new bedspread. So I went to my local craft store to search for coordinating fabrics. To my surprise the material was 50% off so I got beautiful fabric like in the left hand top corner of the picture above for less than $3 a yard! I could make two pillows with one yard of material and still had some left over for another project.

Now to make the pillows. All you do is lay your place mat down on top of your fabric and cut the fabric to the same size as the place mat. Then put good sides together and sew around all four sides, leaving a small opening for you to turn it right side out and then stuff. Here is what it looks like stuffed and not stuffed.

You can still see the small opening on the left side of this picture that I need to hand stitch shut. Once it is hand stitched you have a beautiful throw pillow for less than $8 each!! I actually had some stuffing on hand from another project so these only cost me $14 to make four pillows!!! $14 for four versus $40 for one???? You know D.I.Y is the way to go! ;)

I know that we are past Christmas now but everything Christmas is on clearance so that means you may can still find some place mats and they be even cheaper than before!! Stock up now and you will have them for next year!

How about you, have you found any ways to make cheap decorative throw pillows? I would love to hear your ideas below!

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