I’m not gonna lie, this isn’t new, but what I hoped to make last week didn’t happen so y’all have to wait a little longer for some new house stuff and settle for old stuff instead…

Homemade Burlap Pillow

What you’ll need:

• 12 x 24″ pillow
• Burlap, ~1 yard
• Thread
• Fabric paint

To start, cut the fabric to the pillow size that you need.  I don’t really measure, so this consisted of me wrapping the pillow in burlap and cutting around it so I had just enough to sew on 3 sides (1/2 -3/4″ extra).  I made sure the fold side (side I didn’t have to sew) was one of the longer ones.

Once everything is cut, choose which side will be the outside vs inside of the pillow.  With burlap, that doesn’t really matter, but it obviously makes a huge difference with prints and other fabrics.  I put the pillow in the burlap again to know where to sew up the sides.  I started one side, then took the pillow out and sewed it up.  Since burlap has bigger holes, it’s easy to quickly “sew” and also keeps you on a straight line.  I think I used an outline stitch, that I learned in middle school home ec..

When you finished sewing two sides, flip the fabric inside out, so the stitches are on the inside and don’t show.  Put the pillow all the way in the new pillow case and figure out how much extra burlap you have to work with for the last side.  I had about 3/4″ and folded in the corners, kinda like a present or envelope, before sticking the last part.  Again, I used what I think is an outline stitch, so it was in one line and wouldn’t look awkward if someone flipped the pillow around.

The last thing I did was paint a little something on it, so it wouldn’t just be plain burlap.  Apparently I noticed a lack of anchors in my nautical decor, so I just found a picture of an anchor I liked via Google and carefully started painting.  Since I put three on there, I started in the middle, then did the one on the left and finally, right.  This is where measuring stuff would have probably helped, since I’m sure the three aren’t identical, but thanks to the “lines” in the burlap, they are close enough for me.

Voila, a burlap pillow that takes about 45 minutes to finish!

PS- So Cleo really liked the pillow and always laid by it in the chair which meant cat hair galore.  Since you can’t just take the cover off, I just use a lint roller to get her fur off of it, and it seems to do the trick!