Placemat Pillow

I saw on a couple of different blogs the idea for making pillows out of place mats. I was at Walmart the other day and I grabbed a couple and thought I'd give it a go.

You need a place mat that is made out of TWO pieces sewn together. I got one that's shaped like a leaf for $3.

I found polyester fill batting on sale at JoAnn Fabrics for $2.99 for a big bag. Then, all you need is a seam ripper and a needle and thread.

I found the little opening on the mat where it had been sewn together from the outside originally and I used that as a place to open with my seam ripper. This was useful because there were already areas of threaded reenforcement on either side so that it wouldn't open or rip further while I was filling it. I used a seam ripper to pull apart the stitches in the middle of this. It wasn't a very big opening because it was just the bottom side of one part of the leaf. It would have been handy to have it big enough to put my hand through, but for this shaped placemat, that wasn't possible.

Then, I began stuffing it with batting. Z enjoyed helping me with this and the batting was silky soft, so it was fun to manhandle. I had to use the handle of a wooden spoon to push the batting to the leaf tips.

Lastly, I just need to sew it up from the outside using a couple

of simple stitches. I did this as unobtrusively as possible. And viola! a leaf pillow! I'm going to try this with some standard-sized place mats as well, but it sure was easy. And inexpensive!