You Can Never Have too Many Throw Pillows

I can’t seem to get enough pillows. I like them on my chairs and my couch (which is huge). I like them on my bed and my bedroom chair. I like them on my office chair. I like pillows on the porch furniture. I need LOTS of pillows to make myself comfortable anywhere in my house.

Being in quarantine has put a damper on my acquisition of new pillows…so I’ve been using old sheets with worn out elastic and repurposing them to make pillow forms. I’m stuffing them with old worn out bed pillows that we don’t use anymore. I just pull out the old stuffing and fluff it.

Ordering Online Items Can Be Dissappointing

I’m sure you’ve ordered an item that looked super cute online, only to open the package when it arrives in the mail to a disappointing product. It happens. I ordered a half dozen pillow cases in January with cute stamped images. They were disappointing…very flat and cheap looking.

So I decided to try to dress them up a little with embroidery. If you saw my previous post about my embroidered dandilion pillows, then you can see that embroidery has been keeping me busy lately.

If you are looking for a craft to do to occupy yourself during quarantine, embroidery is easy and relatively inexpensive. You can embellish things you already have.

I think it’s very relaxing. I like to sit and stitch while I’m watching T.V. or listening to podcasts, or when I’m sitting on our porch on a beautiful day.

Here is the result of a week of stitching…you can see that the original was really lacking something. This will find a home in our screened-in sunroom when I eventually find a couch to go out there.

Here is a slide gallery of the details. I used the following stitches: Straight stitch, french knots, satin stitch, cross stitch, couching stitch, and chain stitch. I sewed stitched with a 1/8th inch black ribbon as well as with embroidery floss.

Embroidery Embellishment Details

I tried a new technique (new to me) of weaving inside the gold satin stitch with a lighter gold floss (in the fourth image). It made for an interesting basket weave effect. I’m definitely going to use that again.

Overall I’m delighted with the results. Adding some embroidery embellishments took this cheap-looking pillow to another level. Now it is something that catches the eye and invites one to touch.

Here are some picture tutorials on the stitches I used if you are interested in learning embroidery: (I use a website called The Spruce Crafts for a lot of ideas and tutorials. Each image is linked to a tutorial page.)

If you like embroidery, you’ll find many good ideas on the website above.

Amazon is a wealthy of embroidery and craft supplies. I particularly like this starter kit: