100% recycled pillow

these days all my energy has been going into the birth of my business with my cloth products. it’s a lot of work and a lot of thought. i haven’t slept decently in 3 or 4 nights thanks to bizarre dreams about sewing cloth diapers. and i realized that i needed to step away a moment.

so i did a project that i’ve wanted to do for a while, a christmas gift for my little girl’s nonni (grandparents). The nonni have the same love as i do for couch pillows. and i always have tons of fabric scraps to throw out. and my daughter’s old day care smock (kids in italy wear this type of smock through elementary school). so i decided to make a pillow out of 100% re-used materials.

this is a pretty simple project, great for gifts, which uses up old clothes and rags or scraps of fabric. you need a button-down shirt (or smock!), a shirt without buttons and lots of scraps. and here’s how you do it:

1.  cut a square about 45 cm across from the buttoned shirt (back and front), avoiding the sleeves. these will make the pillow cover. this smock had a back pleat which was partly open, so i had to sew it up in the back.

2. next take the non-buttoned shirt (here my husband’s  old polo which was not only stained but shrunk). this becomes the actual inner pillow. draw and cut out a square a bit bigger than the cover.

3. put the pieces of the non-button shirt together, good sides facing each other, pin and sew up the edges, leaving an open space. i always suggest doing an extra zig zag stitch around the edges in case you wash it, so you don’t risk the edges fraying.

4. now for the stuffing! take the scraps of fabric and cut them up into smaller pieces. i used scraps of PUL, microfleece and suedecloth that i use to make cloth diapers and menstrual pads. they’re synthetic materials, and therefore not recyclable. but if you want to use your cushion for sleeping, it’s probably better to use natural fiber fabrics. turn the empty pillow right side out and stuff it with the scraps. when it’s full, sew the open seam closed. and there’s your pillow!

5. now the pillowcase. again, put the two pieces of the button-down shirt together with right sides facing and pin them. be careful to keep the strip with buttons flat. sew all four sides of the square shut. sticking your fingers in the gaps between buttons, unbutton it and turn right side out. and there’s your pillow cover.

6. put your pillow inside the pillowcase and you have a lovely new pillow! this type of pillow is heavier than those regular synthetic pillow stuffers, but i’m sure you’ll be really happy knowing that you used only materials that would’ve otherwise been thrown away!

and here’s the end result (with another two pillows with pillow cases that i sewed a few years back). have fun!