DIY Decor

Learn how to Create Simple No Sew Shabby Chic Pillow Covers

These Pillow covers have a Romantic and Feminine Flair, that is hard not to Love

Valentine’s Day is around the corner and I have a wonderful no sew shabby chic pillow cover to share with you today. It is such a simple way to add in a soft touch of vintage romance to your home. Lately, I have been feeling so inspired by a shabby chic look, that I thought it would be a fun to tie that into decorating for Valentine’s day. Shabby chic is what I like to call easy elegance. So join me, as I teach you how to make these lovely feminine pillow covers.

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Materials You Will Need to Get Started

*You can shop the same or similar materials towards the end of this post*

  • Natural fabric (linen, muslin, jute, cotton)
  • Fabric Scissors
  • Ruler
  • Fabric Glue
  • Pencil or Fabric Chalk

To learn how to create a shelf with wood corbels for your living room or entryway like in the photo below just stop by and visit my post; Make Your Own Antique corbels and wood shelf.

What You Will Need, to Make Covers Shabby Chic

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  • Fabric Flowers (rosettes)
  • A few different fabric trims
    • Pom pom, Crochet, Lace, Embellished, Leaf cutout, Pearl and Ribbon
  • Heart Stencils

Creating Shabby Chic Pillow Covers

There is nothing wrong with buying pillows from time to time, but a quick change of a pillow cover is a great way to change up a room in a flash. I could not find any online or at the stores that was exactly what I had in mind, so I decided to make a couple of my own.

And these pillow covers were so easy to make! You literally create a fringe all around the pillow to hold the cover together.

First, was choosing a fabric to work with. I am a big fan of a more natural blend, such as cotton or linen blends. These are easy to clean and hold up much better than a lot of other fabrics. And I have always liked the light texture they have to them too.

Determining the Size of Your Pillow

You will need to determine the size of the pillow you want to cover. For my larger pillow, I picked a 18×18, which for the most part is a pretty standard size. I already knew the size, but if you are unsure, you will want to pull out the pillow insert from another cover and lie the pillow cover flat down so that you will be able to measure it.

For visual purposes, I grabbed one of my 18×18 snowflake pillow covers, and placed it on top of my new linen fabric.

Once you know the size of the pillow cover you want to make, you can begin to determine how long you will want your fringe ties to be on the perimeter of the pillow cover.

I ended up going with a 3 inch trim around my pillow covers. I would not go any shorter than 3 inches, but you can go up to 6 inches if you want them to hang longer on the sides and look more like fringe then a bunch of tied knots.

If you are staring at the picture below, looking at the ruler, you will notice I took the picture marked in centimeters. Sorry for the confusion! I actually measured in inches and marked it with a pencil and then my son (3yrs) grabbed the ruler and I was like wait, Mommy needs to grab a quick picture. And well, I was trying to take a quick picture so he could play with the ruler and did not realize that I had the ruler upside down until I was putting together this post. Typical mom blogger problems I suppose.

But, needless to say, I think you get the point. Determine your fringe length and lightly mark with a pencil or fabric chalk on the fabric, so that you will know where to cut.

Again, you do not need to actually keep another pillow cover (of the size you want) on top of your fabric for all these steps. For example, my pillow cover needed to be 18×18 to fit my pillow insert. I decided to make 3 inch ties on the size. So I knew that my measurements would have to be 21×21. I simply marked that out on my fabric and then put a couple marks 3 inches towards the center. But for visual purposes I took the pictures using another pillow cover so it would be easier to envision. Hopefully that helps!

Creating Your Pillow Cover Ties

Since you will need a front and back to your pillow covers, fold the fabric in half, before you begin to cut out your pillow cover. This way you will get both pieces needed at the same time and all the ties on the side will line up perfectly.

For my pillow cover, I went with half a inch wide for my ties and left a one inch space in between. There is really no wrong way. You can do less space and more ties if you would like too. You will repeat this pattern all around your square of of fabric.

Shabby Chic Time!

This is where you can let your creativity run wild! I will share with you my designs and hopefully it help get all that shabby chic inspiration flowing.

I really enjoyed my trip to the craft store to pick out cute trims and fabric flowers. For starters, I brought along my mother and we were both like two kids in a candy store. You would have thought we have been locked into our houses for years. And yet we are like that everytime we go. Like it is the first time. So much fun and I usually end up leaving with at least 2 more new DIY ideas to make.

You will need some good fabric glue to add on all your shabby chic elements. Fabric Fusion and Elmer’s Craft Bond are two of my favorite to use. They also hold up pretty well if you need to spot clean or even put into a gentle cycle (air dry only). You can find a link towards the end of the post for more information or to purchase if you would like.

Fabric glue is however very thick and half the time will not come out of the bottle when I squeeze. Drives me nuts! So I usually unscrew the cap and dip toothpicks or q-tips into the glue and spread onto my DIY projects. So much faster than squeezing the heck out of the bottle for one drop.

For the design on my larger pillow, I did a fuzzy pink pom pom border and then created flowers blooming in the center. It has such a soft a feminine look to it, which was exactly what I was aiming for. And that leaf trim I used may be one of my new favorite obsessions! I love it and want to use it for other projects now too.

Once you have everything glued on, You will want to place your pillow cover somewhere it can lay flat for 24 hours while the glue fully dries. Fabric takes a little while to fully set but when it does, it works like a charm.

After the 24 hour period, you can then stuff your pillow insert into your new shabby chic pillow cover and began tying your fringe together along the edges. I double knotted mine to ensure the cover would not budge if my kids got a hold of them. Also my linen fabric blend was so stiff, that I think it would have unraveled on its own, if I did not do double knots. So, it will probably depend on your fabric and home environment.

For the next pillows, I followed the same steps that I walked you through above, but did completely different designs on both. I found this beautiful crochet trim that I was dying to use. Instead of using the trim on the border of the pillow, I created a shabby chic crochet heart.

It was so easy! I traced out a heart in pencil with a stencil I had. Then cut the crochet trim into small strips. Added glue to the center of it the cut piece and then scrunched it down onto the traced heart. I repeated until I filled up the entire heart that I had traced. It came out so cute!

For the remainder of the pillow, I added on groupings of fabric flowers, crochet rosettes and a outline of a heart with the rest of the pink pom pom trim from the larger pillow. Both pillows compliment each other so well.

If you are loving my salt dough heart garland in the picture below, I can teach you how to make your own. Just hop on over to my recent post; How to Make Salt Dough Heart Garland.

My last pillow, was a small heart shaped pillow that I spelled love out on the front with the leaf trim. This one I will admit, I did not actually have a heart shape pillow to cover. But I was so adamant on owning one, that I decided with the last of my fabric to create a heart shape cover anyways.

I tied up all the fringe and left only two untied. Then I took some poly fill that I had and stuffed the heart pillow cover. I made sure that I did not over stuff, so that it would not be squeezing out the sides. This worked out for me to take pictures for my post, but I will be going back and placing the poly fill in some sort of simple fabric and then seal the edges with fabric glue too.

I created these sweet feminine pillow covers with Valentine’s in mind, but they would really work for other times of the year too like Springtime, summer and even on my daughters bed. I am super happy with the way they came out. These pillow covers added the perfect romantic Shabby Chic look to my living room that I had in mind.

Let Me Keep On Inspiring You

Thank you so much for visiting my blog today. Hopefully you enjoyed this post on no sew shabby Chic pillow covers. These were a lot of fun to make. And did I already mention so simple to do? I would love the chance to inspire you weekly with DIY decor, decorating ideas, furniture painting, gardening and so much more. It’s easy! Just sign up for my weekly email list and I will be sure to take care of the rest.

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Love The Space That Surrounds You Everyday!

-Meagan-

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