kitchen towel pillows {easy DiY project}

A few weeks ago I popped into one of my favorite little local shops–Pomegranate & Fig–to get a gift for a friend and I stumbled across these cute little embroidered kitchen towels.  I loved the little quotes on them & decided to grab a couple for myself.

I had every intention of using them as kitchen towels, but I wanted to first sew loops onto the corners so they would hang nicely from my towel hook, so I set them aside until I could get to it.  However, as they sat there, I couldn’t help think that they were almost too cute to waste in the kitchen, where they would most certainly get ruined.  So I decided to make them into pillows!  It was such an easy project that I can’t believe I’ve never done it before, and I think I will forevermore be on the lookout for cute kitchen towels!

Depending on whether you care whether the pillow looks finished on the inside, you can either follow all the steps or just skip to the towel part, in which case it will only take about 10 minutes!  (Don’t worry, though, the “long” version only took about 45 minutes for 2 pillows–hardly a major time commitment!)

Besides the towels, I used a small scrap of linen fabric, 2 random buttons, & 2 10″x16″ pillow forms.  The total cost for the materials, including the towels (which were $15 each), was about $40, or roughly $20 per pillow.

Long version:

Using the pillow form as a guide, cut out 2 fabric rectangles with pinking shears.  The rectangle should be only ever-so-slightly larger than the pillow.  Don’t worry about screwing it up–this is not an exact science.

Sew the rectangles together, (right sides facing in, if applicable), almost all the way around the edge, leaving a 6″ opening along one of the long edges as shown.  Clip the corners.

Turn the pillowcase inside out.  It should be slightly smaller than the pillow.  Stuff it in & make sure all the corners are flat & that it is all evened out.

Squeeze the open sides together and stitch closed as best you can.  You can do this by hand too, if you want it to look nicer, but using the machine is faster and it doesn’t matter if it looks good because that part won’t show anyway.

Short Version

Use a pin to mark the top of the pattern you want showing on the front of the pillow.

Using the pillow as a guide, fold the towel so that the pretty pattern is on the inside and so that the two short sides overlap. Make sure the edge you want showing is on the inside of the overlap so that it will be on the outside when you flip it inside out.  Sew sides closed along edges, then flip inside out.  It should look like an envelope with the pattern showing in the front.

Stuff the pillow inside.  The flap will stay closed flat on it’s own, but if you want, you can sew a decorative pillow onto the front.  If anyone looks inside the flap, they will see your nice finished pillowcase inside!

Now doesn’t that make you want to run out and get some cute kitchen towels of your own?