How-To Make a Pillow from a Dress Shirt and Tea Towel

How to make a pillow cover from an old dress shirt and a kitchen tea towel

Decorating with pillows is such an easy way to add some style to your home without any major expense but I don't have any extra storage space (none) so I try to use what I have in a variety of different ways, pillows being one of them.

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• How-To Make a Pillow from a Dress Shirt and Kitchen Towel

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A few years ago I refreshed my bedroom for summer with a new duvet cover and pillow shams (you can see the post here) and I bought the pillow above because it went so well with the duvet.  As time went on, I decided to bring the pillow out to the living room and it sort of, kind of went with things but not so well.

This year as I was getting my autumn decor out I saw this tea towel and thought it would be great as a pillow cover.  I draped it over the pillow and bam...the wording stretched across perfectly so it was a go!

How-To Make a Pillow from a Dress Shirt and Kitchen Towel

I didn't want to cut it up because I'll probably use it as a tea towel again in the future, and I didn't want to take too much time to make something, so I decided to use an old shirt as the back of the pillow cover, which I embroidered using the free embroidery machine.

A dress shirt saves you so many steps.  There's no need to finish any seams or to create an "envelope" (like this pillow) because you'll just unbutton the shirt to put the pillow in and to take it out.

Start by ironing your shirt and kitchen towel 😉 The shirt I used was in a bag to donate to the thrift store so it was in need of an ironing.  Measure your pillow and add one inch to the height and width and cut the dress shirt to those dimensions.  (1 inch wider and 1 inch taller than the pillow).  I used a sewing gauge and a disappearing ink pen to make my markings.

Once I had everything marked, I cut. The grid pattern on the shirt made this very easy.  You'll want to be sure to center the buttoned placket so that it falls in the mid-back area of the pillow.

Pin the back of the pillow to the front, right sides together, centering everything.

Sew a ½ inch seam allowance around the entire pillow.

Cut the corners of the shirt portion of the pillow ONLY, 

Unbutton the buttons and begin to turn the pillow cover inside out.

Pull the tea towel to the back so that the front of your pillow is nice and smooth.

And there you have it! Have you ever made a pillow from a towel or dress shirt? I have some of the shirt left and I'd love to hear any ideas you have for what to do with it.

Thanks so much for stopping by.