
I recently decorated the living room in our new house for Christmas, only to find that the colour scheme of my existing couch pillows made them stand out like a sore thumb. So I decided for the first time ever to invest in seasonal throw pillows. I gave some home decor stores a quick look, but at price tags of over $30/pillow, I knew I could do better with a thrift store option.
One of the thrift stores I happened upon was having a 50% off sale on all household linens, including throw pillows. Such a great bit of luck!
My intent was never to find ready-to-use Christmas pillows in the store, but rather to find throw pillows in decent shape, at an affordable price, that could be used as pillow forms, as well as fabrics and materials with which to cover them.
Here’s how the adventure went down…

My entire haul only cost $20 Canadian plus tax, and for that price I got…

- Three new-ish looking pillow forms

- Four green corduroy throw pillows, which look better in real life than this image

- This hand-crocheted white table cloth (such a travesty that someone’s painstaking, beautiful handiwork was being sold for $1.50!)

- A new, in-package millennial pink curtain (I am mixing soft pinks into my holiday decor this year)

- A fuzzy white pillow cover in new condition (I later noticed a small dirty spot, but luckily it washed out completely)

- Two red velvet chair covers

- And finally, a new buffalo plaid, what-I-thought-was a tablecloth, but turned out to be just a small table runner. I did not end up using this as a result of its size being too small.
And so with all these treasures purchased and washed, I pulled out the sewing machine and got to work.

The first makeover was a no-brainer. Slip the like-new pillow cover over the pillow form of the same size. It fit like a glove. Yay!

For the second pillow form, I cut up the red velvet chair covers and made a candy cane pattern using white felt that I had on hand for the stripes.

For the third pillow form, and the first of the four corduroy pillows, I made a cover using the pink curtain layered beneath the crocheted table cloth. Here’s a picture of the larger of the two, once finished:


My next Christmas pillow was the most fun for me. I cut out a snowman from white felt, satin stitched eyes and a carrot-nose, added some real buttons to his belly, and appliqué blanket-stitched him to some of the red velvet from the chair covers. I then did a quick refresher on how to crochet, and found some leftover yarn to make him a cozy scarf. This was made using three short pieces, layered and sewn together. (The template for the outline of the snowman can be downloaded here.)

Next, I carried on with the crochet theme and made a little toque (winter hat) topped with a yarn pom-pom, laid against more of the red-velvet background.
For the shape of the toque, I simply followed the instructions on crocheting a triangle, in this video, and then began tapering it with less and less increases toward the bottom rows.

For the final throw pillow, I followed this blog post to make a colourful forest of shaggy evergreens, using yarn and hot glue. I did not have white material for the background from my thrift store purchase, but found what was labelled as “white velvet” at the dollar store, but turned out to be pretty flimsy, see-through, and disappointing when removed from the packaging. Here’s a picture of how it turned out, before I hand-stitched the bottom closed. (Download my tree template here.)

So in the end, I’m happy with the result of this little holiday pillow adventure for the most part. It took way longer than I would have liked, and the process was pretty messy — the red velvet, for instance, created tiny red balls when cut, and after vacuuming several times, they still seem to be on everything. Nevertheless, it’s always a good feeling to save some money and make something by hand, wouldn’t you agree?
I hope this inspires you to do the same, and add a little more ‘handmade’ to your life. Merry Christmas!
