10 Minute Outdoor Pillows

Hi All!

I’ve really been into fast and easy projects lately. And our 10 Minute DIY Challenge Group is the perfect place to let this fast and easy creativity ride.

We’ve been recently working on giving our back patio an makeover. So far we found some really pretty new patio furniture, well new to me anyway 🙂 I bought some new plants and beautiful terra-cotta pots, moved our old living room rug outside, edged the patio with some river rocks and finally found just the right spot for our outdoor fireplace. So what was left to do but bring a little more color and comfort to our new patio, with beautiful outdoor pillows!

But have you looked at how much outdoor pillows cost? $40-100 each! And don’t even get me started on the price of outdoor fabric! Seriously out of our budget. So I’ve found a fast, easy and above all inexpensive way to make beautiful outdoor pillows for our relaxing new patio.

Outdoor Tablecloth
Sewing Machine
Sewing Pins
Seamstress Measuring Tape
Pillow Inserts (or other pillows from around the house)

My 10 Minute Outdoor Pillow idea came after a wandering trip through HomeGoods. (My favorite kind of shopping trip by the way, there are so many pretty things to look at and with a cup of coffee it is the perfect way to kill an hour or maybe two!)

While on one of these lovely trips I found this beautiful tablecloth, and upon closer inspection it was an indoor/outdoor tablecloth. And while I don’t have any use for an outdoor tablecloth I did have the perfect use for some outdoor fabric, 10 Minute Outdoor Pillows!

To make my super easy 10 Minute Outdoor Pillows I referred to a post I wrote last fall on how to Update Throw Pillows in a Flash, with a couple minor changes of course.

Instead of doing a 6″ overlap for my envelope pillow covers, I bumped it up to a 10″ overlap. The reason why i did this is because I wanted to make sure there wasn’t going to be any gaps for water to seep into the pillow below.

For mildew reasons I recommend using a pillow form that is washable, and made of poly instead of a down pillow. While the down pillows are so much more comfortable you’re going to want to be able to wash your pillows periodically and if they do get wet from the rain you’ll want something that drys quickly.

Once all my measurements were done and my fabric pinned I ran my fabric through my sewing machine. And since there are only two straight seams per pillow it only takes about 3 minutes to sew each pillow. Hows that for fast?!

The only thing left to do was trim any loose threads, turn them right side out, and add my pillow inserts.