Repurposed Sweater Valentine's Pillow

Valentine’s Day should be a day that you surprise your friends with a gift. Remember the excitement of getting Valentine’s cards from your friends and classmates in elementary school? I think we should still share that excitement with our friends now that we’re just a little older. Giving a cuddly repurposed sweater pillow is the perfect Valentine’s gift.

This year I knew I wanted to make cuddly sweater pillows for a friend. She was having a rough year and I thought that something cuddly would be just the right gift. I stopped by the thrift store and found these perfect Valentine’s colored sweaters. They were in excellent condition. I got the pink one for only $1.50 and it’s 100% wool. Magically it’s 100% soft and cuddly wool so it’s perfect for a pillow. I washed the sweaters well , Mom, so they’re sweet smelling and fresh.

I took the sweaters with me to the craft store to find a pillow form that would fit each sweater. There were two of these green pillows on sale for about 1/3 the cost of an actual pillow form. So that was an easy decision to make.

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.