We have been on a pillow making bender lately.  First we did these no sew vegetable print pillows at the preschool I work at and then we made sewn painted pillows at art class.  (post coming soon!) These pillows make the best gift for family members and friends and the best part is they are no sew, aka super easy.  We made ours for the Passover seder since it is tradition to lean on a pillow at the table to celebrate freedom.  It was so cute to see 40 kids sitting around the table at our preschool seder leaning on veggie print pillows! Of course, you can use them for any occasion.  We made a fabric resist pillow for Father’s Day last year and it’s still my husband’s favorite gift.  Keep reading to see how we made these no sew!

Materials

canvas fabric (this looks similar to what we used if you want to purchase something online) I bought ours at Joanns, which has a large selection of canvas fabric. We used two pieces about 8×10 inches for each pillow

vegetables (celery, apples, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, etc.)

fabric paint

batting

glue gun

Step 1

Spread out your canvas fabric over a plastic table clothe (this way the paint won’t seep through onto your table or floor.)  Put your favorite color fabric paints on paper plates or plastic dishes for dipping.  Since you can’t really throw these pillows in the wash I think it might be okay to use tempera paints but I haven’t tried it.  Let me know if you do!

Step 2

Cut up all different veggies and rubber band some together, like three carrots or three cucumbers, to make interesting shapes.  Or put a rubber band around a cut head of lettuce or celery to keep the stalks together.  Dip the veggies into the paint and then stamp them onto the fabric.  Apples give a great shape cut in half and potatoes can be carved to make all kinds of shapes.  You can cut out little handles in them too to make it easy for little hands to hold.  (See how here) Cover the fabric with as many prints as you want.

Step 3

When you’re done stamping, let your fabric dry for several hours.  If you use a big piece of fabric you can cut it up into smaller rectangles for a front and back.  We cut ours into rectangles about 8×10.  We were a little short on vegetable print fabric for the backs of all the pillows.  40 students is a lot of pillows! So we cut up a painted drop clothe the kids had made for the backs the same size, 8×10.

Step 4

Place the two pieces of fabric pretty side to pretty side.  Take your preheated glue gun and glue three sides of the rectangles together about a half inch along the fabric.  Just to be clear, you’re putting the glue in the inside part of the two pieces of fabric.  It’s like the peanut butter inside the two slices of bread, only it’s just go along three edges.

*Note* If you’re working with kids I recommend a low temp glue gun.  If an adult is doing this part the high temp glue guns will have a stronger hold.  We did ours with low temp and it worked great, just fyi,and the kids that wanted to were able to glue their own pillows while supervised.  Yes, you heard me correctly, 3 and 4 year olds glue gunned their own pillows together while closely supervised and they loved it!  Read more here about the power of real tools for children.

Step 5

Turn the pillow inside out so that the pretty side is now on the outside and start stuffin.  Kids love this part.  We had a huge bag of batting that looked like snow.  The kids had a blast stuffing their pillows and watching it fly around.  Fill it so that it’s nice and fluffy, but not so fluffy that you can’t close the remaining open side.

Step 6

When you have the pillow nice and plump, you’re going to fold in the two openedges about an inch to half inch and apply glue gun along that seem until it is glued shut.  This part is for an adult.  You’re pillow is now complete and ready to rest on and enjoy.

These pillows make super great gifts for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.  We added little kid made tags to ours and attached them with some safety pins.  They added a nice touch and made it easy for everyone to recognize their own pillow.

All the kids felt so proud of their pillows and were so anxious to take them home.  Ours sit on each of my girls beds and they are so cute. The fabric is a little scratchy from the paint so we talked about the difference between decorative pillows and sleeping pillows.  The kids were cool with that distinction. You can do all kinds of art on your pillows.  It doesn’t have to be just vegetable prints.  Stay tuned to see the ones we made at art class with 5 and 6 year olds.  They’re amazing!

This post is part of a fab Crafty SOS Blog Hop I’m doing with 13 other amazing kid craft bloggers.  We started here on Red Ted Art with the cutest set of Little Red Riding Hood Play Toys and tomorrow will be Willowday’s turn to share super cool Origami Paper Twirlers.  Thanks for reading along everyone.  xo Meri