Swirled Ruffle Pillow {from a t-shirt} Tutorial

The other day I was in Target with my daughter and we were oohing and aahing over all the pretty throw pillows they have. Of course the thrifty side of me immediately thinks “I could totally make that for soooo much less”.

So that’s what I did.


This was the pillow we saw that we both really liked, but I wasn’t going to pay $20 for it. $20 isn’t a terrible price, but I knew I had a couple of pillow forms at home so I would only need to make the cover.


We wandered on over to the clothing section and I found these two long sleeve t-shirts on clearance for $5 each. I picked 2 that matched her bedding perfectly {in XXL}. $10

I am using the green one for this pillow. I’ll show you the purple one tomorrow.

Let’s get started and I’ll show you how I made this cute swirled ruffle pillow.


First off, I used my rotary cutter and cut the bottom hem off the t-shirt.


I measured my pillow insert and figured it was 14” square so I cut my fabric exactly the same. Normally, you would want to add fabric for your seam allowance, but since the fabric is knit and I wanted it to be tight, I cut it to the same dimensions as the pillow.  I also cut it so I left one of the  side seams intact. Less to sew later. 


I then cut off one of the sleeves.


I cut off the sleeve hem and the seam that runs under the arm so I could open it up and cut some strips for my ruffles.

I cut as many strips as I could {I got 6 from one sleeve}. I cut each one 2” wide and as long as the sleeve would allow.

I made my ruffles like I made them here.  High tension, long stitch length.

All ruffly. cuteness.

I took my ruffles and laid them out how I wanted them on the pillow. I only used 5 of the ruffles.

When I pinned them down I simply overlapped the ends of the ruffles. I laid the one on the bottom flat and tucked under the end of the top one. Hopefully you can see that in the picture.

Looks pretty good from the top. Ruffles hide lots of imperfections.

I started with the bottom ruffle since the end of it goes under the long middle swirl.

Make sure you adjust the tension and stitch length back to normal before you stitch the ruffles down.  I used lots of pins to hold the ruffles in place while I stitched them down to the front of the pillow cover.

All stitched down and lookin’ sweet.

I then flipped the case with right sides together and stitched the 2 sides together and the third side leaving a 6” opening for the pillow insert.

Trim your corners at a diagonal.

Turn right side out and push corners out with something that isn’t too sharp. I like to use a chopstick. Insert your pillow carefully, trying not to pull to hard on the opening {knit fabric with rip easily where it’s been stitched}

Pin your opening together and use a slip stitch to close your opening.  Here is a good tutorial on how to do a slip stitch.

All done. I made the pillow cover so that my slip stitch was at the bottom of the pillow.  It makes me feel better since it never looks completely perfect.

My daughter loves it and I think it turned out pretty cute. I’ll show you the purple one tomorrow. It’s a little different, but still ruffled.
*****UPDATE********


If you would like to see the tutorial for the Ruffled Rosette Pillow, it can be found here.

this post is linked to: Tutorial Tuesday, Tutorials and Tips Tuesday, Dittle Dattle, Creation Corner, Today’s Creative Blog, Spring Fling, Somewhat Simple, Frugalicious Friday, Crazy Domestic