No-sew bolster pillow tutorial

I recently revealed my guest room updates, with most of the changes coming from new accessories sewn by me.

One of my favorite features of the room is one of the smallest: the new bolster pillows made from the bold checked accent fabric. I love these babies!

There's a secret behind these bolsters: they're completely NO-sew creations. Here's how I made them.

First I cut the fabric to go around my bolster pillow form. Actually, I had an old pillow to recover. I cut a rectangle of fabric 25 inches wide x 29 inches long to go around my form, which measured 15 inches long and 7 inches in diameter. No precise measurements here--just be sure to have a big enough piece of fabric to completely cover the form. Turn under one of the long sides of the fabric and press well. This will end up being your "seam" line on the bottom of the roll, so you want it to be nice and neat.

Then I wrapped the fabric around the pillow form so that the wrong side of the fabric was facing out. As you can see, I used backed silk for this pillow, which worked well. I think you could use any medium- to heavy-weight fabric. With the fabric wrapped around the pillow form, secure the two ends as if you were wrapping a piece of candy. I used rubber bands for this. You could use string just as well. Here's what you'll have; I think it looks kind of like a giant Tootsie Roll.

Take the pillow form out of the wrapper. Here's what the ends will look like:

Now, turn the cover right-side out. The bunched up ends will disappear inside the cover.

Once the cover is right side out, stuff the pillow form back in. Pull the fabric good and taut around the pillow, then use the method of your choice to close the seam. I used my glue gun. You could also use fabric glue or Stitch Witchery. Or if you're good at hand sewing, you could sew the opening closed. My glue gun worked fine. As you can see, I pinned as I went along so that the fabric would stay in place while the glue dried. Tip: Be sure the remove the pins before the glue dries completely--you don't want a straight pin stuck in your pillow!

You can leave the pillow like this or add a finishing touch of some kind to the ends. I wanted covered buttons for the ends of mine. You can find covered button kits at any fabric store. The directions are super-easy to follow. You can then sew the buttons onto the ends of the pillow or do what I did and hot-glue them into place.

Voila! A beautiful bolster pillow for just a few minutes' effort!

That's it! Super-easy, and so pretty in front of the large square pillow!

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