Personalized Lounge Pillow DIY

This year Lily asked for a lounge pillow for Christmas. After looking at some pretty expensive lounge pillows that didn't really "wow" me, I decided to make one myself. I used this pattern from McCalls M4123. It was only $1 since JoAnn's were having a sale on McCalls patterns. But you can buy the printable pattern online too. Although it's $9. I think you could probably get it cheaper at JoAnn's.

I made this with one yard of chevron fleece. The pattern says to use 2 and 1/4" yards. So unnecessary! And at $7.50 a yard fleece can really add up! I did not add piping like the pattern suggests to that helped to cut down on the yardage. Fleece is so bulky anyway the piping was not necessary. I used 5lbs of Poly-Fil to stuff this bad boy. With a 40% off JoAnn's coupon that's $15. So in all this pillow cost about $24 with tax. That's really not cheap for a homemade pillow! But the result is SO large and luxurious. Way nicer than any of the ones I saw at Walmart, Amazon or Target.

But the really nice thing was that I was able to customize it by using my embroidery machine to add Lily's name to center in large navy font. I think that's what really makes this lounge pillow totally gorgeous.

It only took me about an hour and a half to make this and I think now that the pattern is cut and I'm familiar with how to assemble the pieces it should take only an hour (not including the embroidery) if I want to make another one for the other kids. Plus if I buy my Poly-Fil in 10lb boxes instead of 5lb boxes I save $3 on the stuffing.