With moving into a new apartment and building my own couch (more on that later), I knew I’d need some cute pillows and I also knew I could make something just as good if not better than what I could find at the store. This coincided with the liquidation of Pat Catan’s where I had bought a lot of random yarn that was very much on sale. So, I bought a four pack of 18-in pillow inserts from amazon and got started.

Mustard & Grey Ribbed Pillow

The first pillow I made was following a pattern on the Yarn & Hooks blog that comes with a really great video tutorial. This one was actually really fun to make and I love how bold the ribbing is. The yarn I used here was from the brand All Things You and it was a Super Bulky Wool blend in a mustard and a grey color. The mustard on the front is one skein and I had two skeins of the grey. The pattern states that it takes about four skeins, so I had to finish up a bit of the edge on the back and join with a bulky white yarn. The pattern also calls for a 16 inch insert, but I knew I wanted a very bulky and fluffy pillow that wouldn’t go flat, so I went with an 18 inch insert to make sure all the corners were filled and robust.

Navy & Grey Chevron Pillow

The second pillow I made using a very cool Polly Plum square pattern that she calls As Time Goes By that can be found here. There’s a really great video that will walk you through the entire pattern, showing you all the little tricks to each stitch. The square as the pattern is written was a few inches too short, so I added two rows right before the end row and the finishing row of single crochet. The end row (row 15 in the pattern) has stitches that help to finish the out the pattern of the chevron all the way to the edge, so any size adjustments have to be added before that. I made two squares and then put the wrong sides together and slip stitched all the way around through the top loops of the single crochet. The color changes depended completely on if I thought I had enough yarn to finish out the row, and if I didn’t I just changed the color. The pattern actually turned out great and I got to use up all my yarn with very few little random bits left over! The yarn I used on the front and in the middle of the back was a Lion Brand Thick & Quick yarn in colors Olympic and Katmai. The navy on the back outside of the gray was an All Things You Super Bulky Wool Blend and then a Lion Brand Wool-ease Thick & Quick yarn in the color Grey Marble around the edge. The squares here also came out to be about 16 inches, even though I had 18 inch inserts because I wanted a good, full pillow.

All-in-all, I’m very happy with my pillows. I hate buying things that I feel like I can make myself and this way you can make it exactly how you like it, not having to settle with whatever is available on the shelf.