Fun With Clearance Tableware

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend…only five more days until the next one woo hoo! 🙂  Today’s project is something that I have had a great deal of fun with- making pillows out of placemats with NO SEWING!!! YEAH!! As much as I enjoy sewing (in straight lines to make extremely basic items) sometimes it seems like such a hassle to get the sewing machine out and use it.  Okay, yes it’s laziness, but whatever, it works!

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I can’t remember where I first heard/read the placemat pillow idea, but the gist is this:  placemats are generally two coordinating or identical fabrics sewn together.  You can tell fairly easy buy looking at one if it has two pieces of fabric or one- you need a “two piece fabric” placemat for a pillow.

First- gather your supplies- placemats, seam ripper, clothespins, fabric glue and poly-fil. I got my placemats on clearance from World Market- I think they were $2.99 each.

Using a seam ripper, pull out the seams on one side of the placemat.  You don’t want to rip out the entire side, but stick with 3-4″ wide of a hole. You are looking for a hole just large enough to fit your hand into.

Once you have your hole, stuff the pillow with Polyfil.  It’s important to smoosh the filling all the way into the corners at the bottom. My Polyfil bag included a wooden stick for this exact purpose but I couldn’t figure out how the stick was supposed to help me, so I just used my hands.  You can do it!

Once your placemat-pillow is stuffed to your satisfaction, it’s time to glue.  Create a thin line of glue on the seem of the opening, and use the clothespins to pinch shut.  Make sure everything lines up evenly and your closing isn’t jagged.

Follow the directions on your fabric glue for how long to leave it alone before handling.  I left mine overnight which was plenty. See? You can’t even tell where my hole was.

Ta da!! You are done.  This is one of the cheapest, easiest projects I’ve done yet- and wouldn’t you know there are adorable placemats at every store I go to?? I’ve even found some double fabric large napkins that I’m debating about turning into pillows!  As far as these go, one pillow is living here and the other went to live in my fabulous cubical, so I see both of these darlings quite often!

What do you all think? Will you be pursuing the clearance aisles with new found vigor and opened eyes? 🙂