Zero-$-Comfort

To make it short: Our last sofa pillows got ripped apart by our chocolate lab who figured they would make a great snack.

Since I was to cheap to spend money on new toss pillows, we spent a few months without any pillows.

Then the other day I decided, that I had to change something. Obviously, I did not want to spend any money, so following instructions I had seen all over blogland I grabbed two dollar store placemats (purchased a few years ago), an old pillow that was taking up space in our closets and some yarn and went to work.

Here is how I made my pillows:

1) I started by opening my place mats at the seams on one side (about 5 inches or so). The opening was wide enough for my hand to get into the mat, but not too much so that I wouldn't have to sew the entire thing back together.

2) Next, I opened ripped the old pillow open as well:

3) I removed the stuffing from the pillow (supported by my little helper) and put it in the place mat. I made sure that it got all the way into the corners of the place mat so that my new pillow would be puffy in all the right places:

4) My place mats looked like this at first:

and then like this, once I thought they were thick enough:

5) Then I took some yarn and a needle and started sewing up the seems. I just tried to make this as neatly as possible. You can also use some hemming tape and an iron to close the seem, but since I didn't have any, I worked with yarn and needle instead. After less than 20 minutes, I ended up with 2 of these:

Here is a close up:

I like the swirly design on the mats/pillows and they now decorate my previously empty sofa. Hopefully our lab won't feel the urge to eat pillow any time soon ;)

Not bad for free, right?

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