Making a Decorative Pillow Out of a T-Shirt - Easy and Cheap

As you know if you read my blog, I am making a Broadway T-shirt quilt for Princess Five. 

She asked me to make one for her a few months back so my family and I have been searching for months to find actual t-shirts that are for Broadway musical theater shows. 

I was blessed to be able to travel all over the state for different things and have been able to go to 7 different second hand stores and friends have gone to more and we now have enough to be able to make her a good sized quilt with all of the larger shows and some less common shows and best of all, we found shirts from all of the shows she has been in including "The King and I" which was her first acting "gig" at about age 3 as she was the "favored" child the king picks up at one point in the play. 

I think she was "bitten" by the acting bug at that point as it is her FAVORITE thing to do is to be involved in Musical Theater! Thus, when I asked her about her passion and what type of quilt she would like for herself, (as I have made many for her sisters and she wasn't really thrilled with the one I made her from when she was younger), she pondered on it for a few days. I should have guessed what she would have come up with but she chose a Broadway Show quilt. She looked at some online but wasn't really excited about most she saw. She really liked one that printed off the logos in black and white but I know from experience that those don't hold up well with time so we opted to start collecting actual shirts from licensed vendors and shows. 

With all that work, we ended up with lots of "Wicked" shirts. I think we ended up with at least 8 or 9 shirts or sweatshirts for the show. She didn't want all of the shirts on the quilt and three were the same but in different sizes. This particular shirt was everyone's favorite but it has texture and we didn't know how well it would hold up to years of use so we opted to make a bed pillow out of it and some of the extra shirts that we had for the same shows. 

The best part of making a pillow from a shirt is the two of the seams are already sewn. Basically, you just cut the top and bottom edges off the shirt making it into a square or rectangle depending on the shape and size you want. Using a quilters ruler and mat makes the job super easy. I purchased most of my rotary cutters, rulers and mats at second hand stores over the years. It makes quick work of cutting the squares.

Once it is cut into the shape you want, put right sides together and sew around all the edges leaving about a three inch hole in the center of the bottom of the pillow. Then, turn the pillow right sides out and start stuffing the pillow. If you have a pillow form that is the size needed for the pillow, you can put a zipper in on the bottom of the pillow or you can sew the top of the pillow closed with right sides together and then turn it right side out and stuff the pillow form into the shirt and slip stitch the bottom closed which probably won't look as good as a zipper but is much easier. The easiest by far is the first method using fiber fill to stuff the pillow and then slip stitching the three inch hole on the bottom closed. 

Using the fill allows you to control how full the pillow is. I like some really full for maybe using behind the back and then I like some softer to lay my head on as the thicker ones hurt my neck.

Making this pillow from start to finish would probably have taken me 20 minutes top if I did it all at once. I haven't finished it as I have been cutting all the quilt squares and have some things going on so I can't just sit and work on it. Hopefully however, I will be able to show you the finished product when I reveal the finished quilt.

Feel free to ask me any questions. Have a Blessed Day!