Make your own pillow form - for $3

 Hello friends!  Ive been working on a project lately that I wanted to share with you (because there simply aren't any tutorials out there that I thought did it well enough) but its got alot of steps (judging by the 66 pictures I just uploaded) so I'm going to divide it up into 3 seperate parts.  This is Part 1, on how to make a pillow form, for details on why I'm doing this project, see part 2, it will have the whole story.

OK, moving on, I hate having to pay 10-20 bucks for a pillow form that I then have to create a cover for, thats just rediculous to me, especially since when I'm making pillows for friends/clients, I try to keep the costs as low as possible. So instead of 10-20 bucks a pop, how about 4 for $9... Now we're talking!  I go to Big Lots and get 3 of the pillows shown below, but you can check around at walmart or any other big box retailer near you. The Big Lots near me had the best price for pilows.  Don't spend a fortune... You're going to cut it up.

I usually buy these about 9 at a time, but then it gets a little hard to move in my sewing room :-)

 This pattern makes about an 18x18 pillow, (well actually i think most of these wound up at 17x18, so if you're looking for a perfect square add an inch to my dimensions below)


I measures and cut across the fabric on one side of the pillow 18 inches from one of the short sides

just the fabric

 Cut the fluff down he same line, it takes me about three passes to get all the way through, just stab the bottom scissor through the fluff to go partway down.  Oh and don't use your best scissors, the fluff will dull them pretty quick.  I grabbed my paper scissors and they work just fine through the fluff.

take your time and make many passes, its easier than trying to muscle through it in one blow

 when you get through all the fluff push your two fluff-lets apart  and cut the fabric apart, save the little piece, we'll use that in part 3, but for now we're just going to use the big piece.

Push the fluff-lets apart

And cut your fabric

Smush the fluff down, you're looking to get as much slack in the fabric to be able to stitch it shut, so really smush it down.  I know it bounces back, its fluff and all, but squish it as much as possible

Pinch your fabric closed to make sure its got enough room to run through your sewing machine.

 I like to serge mine closed, it makes a great finished edge, but if you don't have a serger don't worry, just stitch it across a couple times, you could do a zigzag if you want, but the fabric doesn't stretch, that just would give you a wider seam.  I would recomend doing 2 rows of straight stitching (about 1/4 inch apart) with an optional zigzag between them, then cutting off the excess fabric.  But Like i said, if you have a serger its super duper easy.

 The trickiest part is getting around all the fluff and keeping the fabric taught.  I often have to hold the fabric coming out the back taught to keep the tension good, otherwise the bulk of the fluff has enough force to pull one of the pieces of fabric out of the needles

 Sometimes it takes a bit of finagling to get it all to go through, but this is way cheaper, so you gotta put alittle thought into saving money :-)
 

 Woo Hoo, thats all it takes. Check over your seam of course, I often have to go back over a space or two because I've only caught one side into the stitching.

Whoops, lets fix that gap

Tada! Pillow form for $3 and about 15 minutes once you get used to doing them.  Way cheaper than the $10-20 that Joanns wants to charge you!

Isn't that Sew Cool!