How to turn your Embroidery Project into a Pillow

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So here’s a project I’ve never done before. A good friend found this embroidery project at a second hand store months ago. She asked if I could turn it into a pillow.

Time passed by, and I finally gladly made this pillow a priority. I learned some new skills and enjoyed this quick project.

Here’s how I turned this vintage embroidery project into a pillow cover.

Above is what this project started with from the thrift store.

1. I pulled out my favorite stack of vintage fabrics. I needed to choose a backing.

2. I discovered that I needed to dig a bit further into my vintage fabrics. Even though the above fabrics were the favorites I pulled out, none of them seemed perfect for the backing for the embroidery.

I ended up with this selection below.

Since I was making this project for a friend, I let her choose the backing. She chose the light green floral fabric.

3. I trimmed down the embroidery project to a size more conducive for a throw pillow. I used the embroidered square as a guide.

Here’s where I made my first mistake, though. I used the vertical lines first and found that a 19 inch width was about two inches outside the lines. Nineteen inches is perfect for a standard pillow.

I trimmed around the vertical lines. Then I trimmed two inches outside the horizontal lines as well. Then I unfortunately discovered the lines were not square. This front cover ended up about 17 by 19 inches…which is not a standard size for a pillow insert.

It’s not a big deal. I just ended up making a custom insert with the polyfill that’s been sitting in my closet for the last eight years. It was an excellent reason to use it up.

4. I ironed on some Pellon Shape Flex Interfacing to the back of the embroidery.

I felt like this was a good stabilizer to the somewhat flimsy fabric, but I also felt it protected the stitches on the back of the embroidery.

5. I hemmed the bottom edge of the front of the pillow cover. Especially since this base fabric easily unravels, I am securing all edges to ensure the stray fibers are all sewn in tight.

6. Next it was time to cut backing for the pillow cover. I obviously oversized the backing. I highly recommend oversizing the backing and later trimming it down.

7. Just like the front, I hemmed the bottom edge of the backing as well.

8. I sewed in the zipper. Like I’ve mentioned before, I’ve morphed over to these metal zippers, and I love them. I almost always order these from Zipit.

9. I pinned the two pieces RIGHT SIDES OUT. This may seem backward, but this will create some nice French seams. It rids the pillow of all raw seams. Plus, if you look closely, you can see the fibers unraveling so easily from the embroidery cloth. The French seams will tuck those fibers in nice and secure.

10. I trimmed the edges around the seam I just sewed. It’s hard to see below, but there is now stitching all the way around the perimeter of the pillow.

On the right edge, I’ve trimmed off the excess fabric about an eighth of an inch from the seam.

11. In the above picture, I sewed around the seams with the front and back facing out. Now I turned the pillow inside out and sewed again around the perimeter (minus where the zipper is.)

I sewed a large quarter of an inch seam allowance all around the outside. By doing this, I sewed the edges from the above picture inside a seam.

You can see the clean edges below. These are the edges on the inside of the pillow.

12. I flipped the pillow right side out, and put in a nice crisp pillow insert. Like I mentioned above, I accidentally trimmed the front of the cover down to a non standard pillow size. Because of that, I made a custom pillow insert.

I simply cut two pieces of fabric two inches larger than the pillow cover. I sewed those two pieces together and filled them with polyfill.

If you ask me, I think it turned out so pretty. Here’s one final look at the metal zipper!