Repurposed Sweater Valentine’s Pillow

Sharing is caring!

 

I laid the sweater out on my cutting mat and laid the pillow on top of the sweater to measure where to cut the sweater.  I left about 1 inch extra to turn under for seams.

The pink sweater was a little shorter in length, so I had to cut the sleeves a little to be able to have enough of the body of the sweater to use.   I cut the sleeves so that the seam remained with the sleeve,    that way I can keep the sleeves for a future project without them unraveling.  The sweater was wide enough that I’d only be using the center portion of the sweater and that angled area under the arms would end up hidden in the side seams.

I sewed the seams on my sewing machine.  I sewed two seams close together to make the seams a little stronger.  Those of you who are talented seamstresses probably know a better way to do this, but it worked fine for my purposes.

I used the bottom finished edges of each sweater to make one of the seams.  The finished edges were quickly sewn shut by hand.  This allowed me to mush the pillow (a technical term) and stretch the sweater while I was sewing so that it pillow looks nice and smooth when it’s finished.

The pink pillow looks much better in person.  It received 2 out of 2 teenage daughter thumbs up.  And those were unsolicited positive comments, so they mean much more.  Both of my daughter commented on how much they like the texture and pattern on the pillow.

As I was hand-sewing the red pillow shut, I had a light bulb moment. Bing.  I added a monogram for my dear friend, “C.”

I took two strands of white yarn and twisted them together.  I laid the yarn out in a shape that I liked and then sewed it down with small stitches.

Now I have to look for more sweaters to surprise my daughters since they liked the pillows so much.  I have 3 weeks.  Cross your fingers for me.

Update:
I loved these sweaters so much that I made two additional easy projects from the sleeves.

Susan

I’m a mom of 3, a veteran and military spouse. I’ve moved into 20+ homes all around the world. My passion is helping busy people make the space and time for what’s really important to them.