DIY Tutorial – Festive Thanksgiving Decorative Pillow

You can have a Pinterest worthy living room or sitting room by Thanksgiving with only a tiny bit of work. Best of all, you don’t have to jump onto Etsy and spend hours sorting through decorative pillows that fit in with your decor and personality. Instead, find the fabric you want, and create the fun designs yourself.

These Thanksgiving pillows are a great way to put little reminders of gratitude around the home. Using simple iron-on appliques, the opportunities are endless. Not to mention, they are festive decor pillows that are easy to store too.

Getting Everything Ready

First off, let’s put a few worries to rest, you don’t need iron-on letters. We know how annoying it is to find good looking iron-on letters. You also don’t need paint, stencils, or fabric markers, although you're welcome to use any of them as your creative side requests. 

Materials you will need include:

• Fabric – specifically upholstery fabric or something equally sturdy
• Iron-on (more on printing your own patterns in a moment)
• Appliques – optional
• Plier stapler
• Staples for your Plier stapler
• Pillow form
• Scissors
• Iron
• Tape measure
• Sewing machine

The stapler will change how you do many projects, and we were so glad to share this hack! It’s just one of the so many hacks we’ve discovered to help aid you in your sewing.

Measure and Cut

Choosing a pillow form is the very first step. You can find these at any craft store and usually in a massive variety of sizes. Measure your pillow form and then add two inches onto each side for a seam allowance. Then, cut your fabric choices to the desired size.

Decorate Away

These pillows work out exceptionally well if you have access to a personal cutting machine. Using simple software, you design your patterns and then print straight onto the iron-ons. One of the more popular machine options is a Cricut, and you can definitely find them in craft stores, or order it directly online. Then you simply print and iron. Be careful when working with iron-on, though, and always use a piece of fabric to protect the lettering.

Join Your Fabric

You've applied your iron-on, or appliques and now you're ready actually to make the pillow cover a functional pillow cover. Start by taking both fabrics and placing them right-sides together. Then staple them shut with a plier stapler. The type of stapler is pretty important. It will easily go through thick upholstery fabric but doesn’t staple straight down like a staple gun.

Use the staples to secure together three of the four sides of your pillow cover. Then use your sewing machine to finish those sides. This stapler trick replaces the entire pinning process. Your sewing machine’s new best friend is a stapler. You won’t be fighting pins, and you can literally whiz through a project without having to slow down your sewing machine at all.

Keep in mind when pairing staples and sewing machines, you might want to give a bit more allowance for your seam. Staple closely to the edge. When you’re done sewing, simply trim off the staples! Don’t forget that you want to leave an opening just big enough for you to shove the pillow in through.

Complete Your Pillow

Turn your pillowcase right side out, and then push the pillow form into place. Be gentle! Then, either hand stitches or use Stitch Witcher (or something similar) to close the small opening. These pillows are great to break out for the holidays, but they're also fun to do for various parts of the year. If you're feeling really adventurous, you can opt to put a zipper on one end and then make pillow covers for different holidays but use the same pillow form.

Before you begin your pillows, be sure to check out GoldStar Tools for all of your sewing needs, and if you can’t find something you are looking for contact us and let us know!