My kids already had “travel” pillows that I had made for them a year or so ago. They were long and skinny, and had handles on each end. They served us well. As we prepared to travel, my son brought his to me and told me that he didn’t like it anymore. He asked me, very politely, to make him a new one for the plane. My son is 3! Of course, I agreed… I mean, a pillow is pretty simple.
The photos of prep I am sharing are of my daughter’s pillow. If one gets one, the other does too, you see. I decided about how long and wide I wanted the pillow and cut a piece of fabric (folded in half) about twice as long as I thought I might need.
I stitched halfway down and then moved over just a tad and stitched the other half. Easy transition from pillow to pillowcase!
Then, I cut at the transition point and moved the seam so that it would be in the middle of the fabric for the rest of the steps.
I held the strap over the fabric to determine spacing… and then put it between the two layers of fabric and pinned into place. I stitched across the top (and straps). Along the bottom, I stitched across, leaving a gap large enough to stuff the fluff through when completing. I boxed in the corners and this is pretty much what happens…
Many folks would say that this is the point where you trim everything nicely and whatnot… but I figured I’ll never see this part again, so I turned it out – easy, since there was a handle in there to grab – and stuffed the pillow. After hand-stitching the bottom closed, the pillow was pretty much done. I decided to add one button to my daughter’s and two to my son’s. This was partly for looks and partly to keep the pillow fluff from becoming bunched.
Finally, I took the other half of the fabric that I started with and turned the seam to the middle, stitched across the bottom, boxed the bottom in like I had done with the pillow and then turned right side out. I folded over the top edge and stitched from the right side to secure the top. Voila! Pillow cases. I didn’t bother to trim in this step, purely for time constraint reasons, but I will, eventually, because the inside definitely frays a bit otherwise.
I added KAM snaps to the straps so that I could attach the pillows to our luggage instead of stuffing them inside. It totally worked. I’ll try to take a photo of that feature later.
However, the pillows, with pillowcases were a total success! We flew this morning and my son used & loved his! And I used my daughter’s to support my arm, which was acting as her pillow… Now that we have reached our destination, I’ll be able to toss them right into the wash and they’ll be ready for more adventures! Hooray!
