diy ruffle pillow covers from old tshirts

I want to encourage you first in case you’ve never used a sewing machine. It’s more difficult to thread the machine then it is to actually sew on it.

I’ve never used a sewing machine that was born after 1970. I used to use an olive green one that Jason found in the basement of an apartment we rented. When that one died, my mom gave me another one she had.

Ask yo’ mamas. Call your grandma. Google how to thread it, put a fresh needle in ‘er, and you’ll be good to go.

This ruffle pillow is made from old tshirts. That wonderful jersey cotton of tshirts doesn’t fray, so you can cut it up and do all sorts of nasty to it and there’s no need to hem.

And it’s so soft on the face too. Who wants to lay on a rough crusty pillow?

If you want to be able to wash your pillow covers, throw all your fabric in the wash first. That way, it’ll soften up and preshrink. I used this white denim I had onhand that I am now obsessed with. I have no idea what exactly it is because I got it at a local old-timey fabric shop rather then one of the chain stores.

But I plan on taking in a swatch and begging for more.

Cut three pieces of the fabric. For a 20″ pillow, you’ll need one 21″ X 21″ piece, one 18″ X 21″ piece and one 10″ X 21″ piece.

(If you are making a cover for a 16″ pillow, you’d need one 17″ X 17″ piece, one 14″ X 17″ piece and one 10″ X 17″ piece.)

This is for a 20″ pillow cover.

Hem one 21″ side of both of the smaller pieces. 

Cut up the tshirt into about 2″ wide strips.

Take your 21″ X 21″ inch piece of fabric, which is the front of your pillow, and decide where you’d like your ruffles.

Lay the strip down on your fabric, right side up, and leave a little bit of over hang to make sure the ruffle ends up inside the hem at the end.

Begin sewing a few stitches, backstitch, and let the fun begin.

There’s no wrong way to get your ruffle on.

You can create a few folds: 

Smush them down and lay them flat, and sew, sew, sew right down the center:

After you are happy with your ruffles, it will look like this:

Take your 18″ X 21″ piece and lay it on top, right sides together, and the hemmed edge towards the top. Line up the bottom raw edges. 

Take the 10″ X 21″ piece and lay it on top of that, right side down, with the hemmed edge towards the bottom. Line up the top raw edges.

Pin to hold in place and sew around all four sides of the pillow, closing it up. Make sure you are grabbing all the fabric pieces and the ruffle edges as you are going around.

Turn right side out and put your pillow form in. 

Here is another one with a different way of creating the ruffles:

One strip of tshirt won’t do the entire ruffle, so when you get to the end of one strip, just fold it under, grab another strip, fold the end of that one under and tuck it up under the one that’s already on the fabric.

You can pinch and fold down several ruffles at a time.

If you get to the end and have extra, just trim it off leaving a little extra and use it for the next ruffle.