DIY Textured Spiral Pillow

Hi everyone! I hope you have having a great New Years Eve. One of my resolutions for 2013 is to spend less money on decor. This will be quite hard, because I have had a bit of a pillow obsession lately. It seems like whenever I go into Anthropologie and West Elm, I am bombarded with beautiful pillows in great prints and unique textures. It takes all of the self control I can muster to not whip out my credit card and have a pillow shopping spree.

Since my love of pricey pillows is not going away anytime soon, I started my resolution early and attempted to satisfy my itch by making my own pillow. You can see the finished product in the photo above… it is the gray pillow in the middle. I think it turned out great, but Zuzu the poodle isn’t a big fan. She much prefers the fluffy faux fur pillow I purchased at Ross But don’t let Zuzu’s opinion sway you, this pillow is AWESOME. It has beautiful texture and was quite fun to make.

I started out by cutting up an old sweater into thin strips. Each strip was about 8-9 inches long and 1/2 inches wide.

I stretched each strip out until the edges started to curl in.

Then I began twisting each strip into a spiral.

I used regular Elmer’s glue to keep the spiral from unwinding. Elmer’s glue worked fine, but I would suggest either using fabric glue or stitching each spiral together. This will ensure the spirals are more sturdy.

Next I attached the spirals to a pillow Before I explain how to do that, let me give some background on the pillow that I used . A few weeks ago, I attempted to sew a cover for an old pillow that I had. Unfortunately, it turned out awful (my sewing skills could use some improvement). Since I wasn’t planning on using my hideous creation, I decided that it was the perfect candidate for the textured pillow makeover. If you don’t have an old pillow handy, I would suggest purchasing a plain pillow cover from Target or Walmart. I think they are fairly affordable. Once I had my pillow ready, I just used fabric glue to attach each spiral. I covered the entire front of the pillow with the spirals.

Full disclosure, I am not expecting this pillow to hold up very well. It would have been much better to sew each spiral on, but I used fabric glue because I was on a sewing strike (due to my aforementioned failure in sewing a simple pillow cover).