Placemat Pillow Project

I found this fabulous and crazy simple idea to make throw pillows out of double layered placemats at this fabulous site. How I didnt think of this before now, I have no idea....but I give full credit for this to the artsy-crafty babe.

Anyway, I found this placemat--two acutally--at World Market. (The best store ever.)

Match my couch and have a different print on back which I thought would be cute.

So here is how you do this...so totally easy.
First, take a seam ripper and tear out the stitches on one end. You dont have to go all the way across if you are using batting as a fill, but you probably do if you use a pillow form.

Next, you cram it full of batting.

You can kinda see the pillow in the background that came with our couches and that I detest. We have 4 of them and I have them stuck in a trunk because I hate them--they are all 80's geometric print. Barf. I decided this would be a great use of the batting in them so i ripped them open with the same seam ripper and am stealing the stuffing out of them.
Anyway, the final step is to sew up the seam you ripped out. I suppose you could do this by hand, but I used the machine. You could also embellish these at this point if you wanted. I didnt.
This is the final result which honest to goodness took me 5 minutes to make both of....

That is the hated pillow shell hanging over the top which I will probably just pitch unless i can think of some better use.
These arent huge, but perfect for a little back support while sitting on the couch. That is all we use them for anyway. If I want a sleeping pillow, I will go to bed.
Here are others that I got to do the same thing with.

We have two matching beige couches in the other room that are very plain--since I refuse to put the hideous 80s pillows on them. I am going to make these to go on those couches and then I have my eye on a really cute elephant pillow at World Market, but so far I am too cheap to buy it. Maybe next trip.
My sister has this same project in the works...you can see hers here.