Autumn Pillow Cover

Let the Fall Decorating DIY and Craft Ideas Begin

The autumn pillow cover project combines a few things I really love. Firstly, the craft of embroidery. There is nothing like finding a peaceful moment to sit down, let your mind clear and focus on simple stitching. Then the seasonal home decorating that gives you ways to be creative and keep you living in the present. And lastly, the recycling of old fabrics and textiles that would otherwise be thrown away.

A pile of oatmeal linen pieces has been looking at me from the basket of yarn for a while. Making linen artisan fashion and bags usually leaves me with small pieces of high-quality linen and it seems such waste to throw them away. So I use them to make small pieces of art like the spring fabric tulips or the precious fabric cloth book. Or even to produce a large piece of painted and embroidered wall hanging tapestry. Today we’ll be using it to make a sweet pillow cover DIY.

Autumn Pillow Cover

You’ll need:

• FREE Printable fall motifs
• fabric scraps (no smaller than 5 x 5 cm of double fabric)
• embroidery floss in fall colour palette
• embroidery needle
• a pillow case (or an old bedding to make your own)
• regular needle and thread
• scissors

Instructions

It is completely up to you to decide which motifs you’d like to apply to the pillow cover. You can either sketch your own or use the FREE Printable that I’ve made for you. And again, you can try all the motifs or just pick one or two, it is completely up to your creativity.

What I decided to do was use a variety of motifs and stitch them onto the homemade pillow case forming a sweet little fall wreath.

Firstly, I sketched the motifs with pencil onto the scrap linen fabric. Make sure to use a double fabric which will make the applique more durable and easier to stitch onto the pillow cover. Then I chose a beautiful autumn colour palette and embroidered each motif by hand using each of these colours.

Once you have your motifs stitched on the double scrap fabric, cut them out leaving 1/2 and inch allowance to give the motif a nice rustic edge. Take the pillow cover, iron it flat and sketch a little circle with a pencil to see where the motifs will go. The circle should be so large so that you can comfortably fit all the motifs in. You can make as many as you like and place them either into a round wreath or spread them randomly across the pillow case.

DIY Pillow Case

I had an old white bedding at home that has been previously cut and that I had no other use for. It made a perfect pillow case because I still had the side with the buttons intact. I sketched approx. 45 x 45 cm square on the bedding and cut the piece out. Then I turned it inside out with the right sides facing each other and stitched around the edges to make a pillow cover.

The last step was to attach the embroidered autumn motifs. This can easily be done with the regular needle and thread by hand-stitching the motif onto the pillow case. Just make sure that you only stitch to one layer of the pillow case, not all the way through like I did with the first 🙂