When a certain big Swedish apparel retailer decided to offer a home collection including a hand drawn looking button pillow, it started my wheels turning. It looked completely DIY-able and the collection isn’t available in the United States so, what the heck. Here is a step-by-step
tutorial with a slight color shift just to be different.
What You Need:
- 3/4 yard of plain, flat weave fabric
- scissors
- sewing machine
- pins
- thread
- ruler
- chalk
- needle
- embroidery floss and needle
- fabric marker in your color choice
- a variety of circular shapes to trace
What You Do:
1. Fold fabric in half and trace and cut out two circles for the size of ‘button’ you want.
2. Trace a smaller circle about 3/4″ to 1″ smaller around the inside of the outer edge of your cut circles using the fabric marker and pressing firmly.
Go over the line to make it dark enough.
3.Trace another circle approximately 2 1/2″ from the first line.
4. Trace around a smaller circular shape to make the center ‘holes’
5. Measure and cut out a 2 1/2″ band of fabric for the gusset or boxing. Pin it in place and stitch around the entire circle.
6. Fold pillow top in half and snip out small ‘v’ shapes on both ends. Repeat this on the back cut piece of the pillow. This is used for proper alignment of the front and back pieces on the gusset piece.
7. Stitch the gusset on the front of the pillow and make small snips into the seam allowance for the fabric to release around the curve.
8. With the V’s lined up, pin the back side of the pillow to the gusset. Stitch around the pillow leaving a 7″ opening for stuffing the pillow. Be sure to backstitch when starting the stitching and ending it so the stitches won’t come out when you stuff the pillow.
9. Make a pillow insert 1″ larger than the button pillow cover and squish it up to stuff inside the pillow cover.
10. Pin the opening closed and stitch securely, tie and hide the knot at the end, cut thread.
11. Cut several 10″ lengths of embroidery floss, thread needle, tie a big fat knot in one end and pull the needle right through the center of the inside drawn circles, pull snugly and tie another big knot. Repeat this for all four holes
The great thing about the button pillow is that it is supposed to look hand drawn so you can’t really make too big of a mistake using the fabric marker. The cartoon looking button pillow can be made to any size, using different colors of markers for each pillow. You could make giant floor button pillows for extra seating or just relaxing.
