I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to department stores and linen stores in search of sofa pillows only to be disappointed in the selection and the outrageous price tag. It seems like the prettier the pillow; the deeper I would have to dip into my pocket book, which wasn’t going to happen. I had two sets of furniture to accessories and so I needed a minimum of 8 pillows, but with a few extra I rounded it up to 10. The least expensive pillow I found for the quality I was looking for was $22.00 a pillow. That’s $220.00 just for pillows! I refused to pay that price.

So I went home and stared at my empty couches feeling like I failed them. Then a bright idea came to me - I’ll go to my fabric store and make my own pillows. Now you have to know, I’m not overly skilled with the sewing machine by any means, so taking on this task was a huge leap of faith, but it was worth the risk for the possible savings.

You can find a near-the-end bolt of fabric that is marked down tremendously and get that fabric dirt cheap. I found a discontinued fabric that I fell absolutely in love with that had a paisley print on it in my living room colors and had to have it on the spot. I grabbed it up and had them measure it out. It cost me $32.00.

For a standard pillow, tell the store seamstress to give you 42” in length when measuring the bolt. The pillow width will be about 32 inches wide all the way around which is a 16 X 16 inch pillow, but you want an extra 10 inches to work with when sewing. Extra material can always make smaller pillows.

There is one more supply you have to purchase before you get started. You need to purchase several bags of soft batting. Which is the same white fluffy stuffing that you put in stuffed animals, if you’ve ever made those. Batting is available at sewing stores and many craft stores, sold in large plastic bags. One bag fills approximately two pillows. I like to stuff the pillows tightly so that they are good and firm. The cost is usually $3.00-5.00 a bag. I bought 5 big bags, spending $25.00.

Making a sofa pillow is quite easy. It’s just a matter of sewing up three and ¾ sides of fabric on the sewing machine and hand sewing the rest. A nice size to work with for a sofa is a 16 X 16 inch piece of fabric. Start by doubling up your fabric; lay your fabric down so that the decorative side is facing inside toward each other. Cut the fabric to 19 X 19 inch lengths. Take your fabric to the sewing machine and sew all the sides up until you get to about 3 inches from finish. You need those three inches to flip the fabric inside out and to be able to manually stuff all the stuffing inside the pillow. Once you do that you will need to finish sewing up the rest of the three inches by hand with a blind stitch.

You’re done. You have a magnificent pillow that you designed and it looks terrific and matches your décor. If you want to get really fancy you can put fringe or beads around the perimeter.

I spent approximately $57.00 and made 10 pillows. The cost of each pillow was $5.70 compared to the store’s price of $22.00. Not to mention I got to pick out the exact material print I wanted. Below are two sets of pillows I made. One is from upholstery fabric and the other is micro fiber suede material.