My Sister's Suitcase - Packed with Creativity

Packed with Creativity

Kids Christmas Pillows

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Today’s project is just for the kids 🙂 I have been thinking about how much my boys love decorating for Christmas, and how it is sometimes hard for me to contain my OCD when it comes to placing ornaments on our tree… I have often wished they had their own little trees in their bedroom that they could decorate however they want!

Here is a little twist on that idea… A Christmas tree pillow, with removeable ornaments and decorations. And while we’re at it, let’s add a build-your-own Snowman pillow too 🙂

These pillows were so much fun to make, and my kids are really excited to use them! I started out with these festive napkins from Target ($3.99 for a set of 2):
They are 20 x 20 inches — perfect for the 18″ pillow forms I had sitting at home in the closet 🙂
I also picked up some Heat N’ Bond and felt at JoAnns. My idea was to make the basic tree shape out of felt, and adhere it to the pillow cover with the Heat N’ Bond (I like to avoid sewing whenever possible!) If you haven’t used this product before, it is super easy and saves a lot of time. Just cut a piece of the Heat N’ Bond that will be big enough to fit your design, place it down with the backing paper facing up towards you, and iron it for about 5 seconds (no steam.)
Now it is time to cut out our tree. I free-handed all of the shapes that I used for this project, it was much easier than finding templates and tracing everything. For the tree, I drew a line down the center and sketched my tree on one half. Then I folded the piece of felt in half, and cut it out (this way, the tree is symmetrical!)
For the snowman’s body, I just found some round objects in the house to trace (cups, lids, etc.) Ok, so I guess I didn’t freehand everything :)
I wanted to customize the pillows, so I made some felt letters to spell out their names. I just printed the names out, cut out each one, pinned it to the felt and cut out the letters. Make sure your Heat N’ Bond is ironed on the back before you do this!
Now comes the time for sewing the pillow covers… Just so you know, I am not a seamstress by any means! Since I basically just “wing it” when it comes to sewing, I don’t really know how to explain what I’m doing… so that is one area where you won’t get much of a tutorial from me 🙂
Basically, I had this cute flannel that I wanted to use to make a pocket for the back of each pillow. This is where the kids will put all of their decorations/accessories when they aren’t using them. 

I cut a 12 x 24 inch piece of flannel for each pocket, folded it over (to make the pocket a little more sturdy) and folded in the edges to give me about a 10 inch finished pocket. Then I pinned up 3 sides of the napkins (right sides together, the pocket is now inside), and sewed them up. Once I turned them right side out, I was ready to iron on my felt.

This is the part that was a little harder than I thought it would be… Because felt is so much thicker than regular fabric, you have to iron the back side of the fabric to get it to adhere (rather than putting the iron directly on the felt.)
 
To make sure the felt shapes and letters were staying where I wanted them to, I just pinned them in place, then turned the pillow inside out and ironed them on. Make sure you take the backing paper off first 🙂
Here’s what the finished pillow looks like (just a blank tree ready to be decorated!)


For the decorations and accessories, I used pom poms, felt shapes, some mini pom pom trim, mini tinsel garland, and some cute candy shapes from Jolee’s boutique.

 

I used the prickley part of the velro, cut into small pieces to fit my shapes, and adhered everything with hot glue 🙂 You don’t need the other part of the velcro because the prickley stuff sticks to felt rather nicely.
Now we’re ready to add everything to the pillows!
 
 
Here is the pocket on the back of the pillow for all the goodies… I actually stuck everything in a Ziploc and slid it into the pocket. That way it will all stay together. At least for a few hours 🙂
 

I’m pretty sure these pillows will be a big hit at our house, and it will be a fun tradition to pull them out every year at Christmas time.  {Updated to add: This year, I’ll have to make one for my little girl too!} What traditions do you have for your kids?


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