Repurposing -- Holiday Placemat Pillow

Ahhhh. After a one and a half day decorating marathon, the halls are decked! Christmas is upon us, and at our house it's all around us. Yes, it's time to break out the Christmas decorations and maybe make a few new ones! Here's a new application for the "old" trick of repurposing a placemat to create a pillow. This time it's a holiday pillow. Here are the specifics...

Cost...
Placemat: $5.95 @ Crate & Barrel
Napkin: $3.95 @ Crate & Barrel
Stuffing: Poly-Fil $1.80 on sale @ Hobby Lobby

This pillow was a little different than the others I had made because the placemat wasn't "lined." It was just one piece of fabric, so I needed another piece of fabric for the back of the pillow. I could have used fabric from my home stash, but I decided when I bought the placemat to buy a complimentary colored napkin to use for the back of the pillow. So easy.


When it came time to make the pillow I laid both pieces of fabrics (wrong sides together) on the ironing board with the placemat facing up. I lined up two sides of the napkin and placemat and ironed the other two sides of the napkin over the placemat to show me where best to fold the napkin so all sides would line up. Then I pressed the newly made napkin hems for those two sides. (No need to stitch those hems because that will be taken care of when you stitch the placemat to the napkin.)

It was time to pin the placemat and napkin together -- wrong sides together. Then I sewed along the already existing 1" hemline of the placemat, leaving an opening in the bottom of the pillow for stuffing access. A little stuffing filled the pillow, and the hole was stitched shut! So easy. So quick. So festive! So dang cute!!!