DIY Fall Pillow From Painter's Drop Cloth

by The 2 Seasons

4 Materials

1 Hour

Easy

I love to make pillows for our home using nice decorator's fabric that I buy when it is drastically reduced. However, the last three years I have made fall pillows using men's wool plaid sports coats or plaid flannel shirts. This year I decided to use some scraps of painter's drop cloth and linen to make a cute fall pillow that is nice enough for our great room sofa.

diy fall pillow from painter s drop cloth

When I make pillows, I like to use a nice fabric on the front, but for the back I use painter's drop cloth and make an envelope closing. You can buy a huge piece of the drop cloth (make sure it is cotton) at a paint store or a big box hardware store. It will last for a long time if it is just being used for the backing. For the front of this year's pillow I decided to buy a piece of linen. It was less than $10.00 for a yard, and the width was around 50 inches. I made the pillow to fit a 20 inch down insert. You can visit our blog and find instructions on how to make pillows along with other cute pillow ideas. Just search the projects.

The first thing I did was cut out the square pillow top and left 1/2 inch on all sides for the seam allowance. Be sure to make your pillow so that it will fit a pillow form tightly. It will look so much better. Than I cut out two pieces of fabric from a drop cloth, and I frayed the edges. I just guessed on the size of these pieces of fabric by judging how large they needed to be to look like the right proportion to the pillow's size. Once they were cut and frayed, I used some rawhide shoestrings for my lettering. I cut out pieces and added them to the drop cloth in a tilted way with glue. That kept me from having to be so careful about lining the letters up perfectly. I let the glue dry thoroughly and then sewed the pieces to the pillow top. Again, I tilted the fabric so it would have a little attitude. Then I sewed the fabric pieces together to form the pillow cover.

The pillow turned out just the way I wanted it to. This was such an easy project that took very little time and money and yet produces a big impact.

It looks great with some colorful fall pillows that I made, too. In fact, it looks better against some color. This was such an easy project that took very little time and money and yet produces a big impact.