I LOVE the look of grain sacks! Do you? I’d love to make pillows out of them, but unfortunately, my beer budget pockets won’t stretch to the champagne tastes of grain sack. Antique grain sacks can be priced up to $100 each and with two boys with sticky fingers and a puppy in the house it just isn’t worth it.
I love these pottery barn ones:
$89 each from Pottery Barn
I enjoy seeing what Miss Mustard Seed has done on her blog with grain sacks and what Our Vintage Home Love has done with coffee sacks. Really cool ideas! Look at this chair covered with vintage grain sacks!
Unkown internet source
Like many people I’m always looking to stretch my dollars with design. I came across a wonderful website called Living Simple in the South and found Lyssa’s cool idea to make tea towels from Target into pillows. After reading her blog, I rushed to Target with my guys in tow. Got them popcorn and slushies while we walked the aisles on the search for these amazing tea towels.
Here they are:
Just $3.99 and they look like grain sack!
I then went to Joanne’s and purchased a huge bag of poly-fil for $8.99 and asked my crafty neighbor if she could help me with her sewing machine. Conor and I joined her for a monring of crafts while John was at school. She pulled the Singer out and off we went. I haven’t sewed in quite a while, not since Mount Holyoke College and Bristol University working on costumes and sets. My friend’s sewing machine was being a bit temperamental so she took over the sewing and I did the stuffing and pinning.
We simply folded the towels inside out (didn’t cut as suggested on Living Simple in the South) and sewed along the sides, then flipped to the right side, filled and sewed the bottom.
Sock monkey loves the new pillows!
I’m actually thinking of changing the color scheme for Fall / Winter and doing more black and white to complement the fireplace. Thinking Ikat and more grain sack. I love that these Target tea towels are soft and not scratchy as grain sack can be. For probably $6 a pillow, you can’t go wrong.
My crafty friend also had me go through boxes of material she had. She is an amazing quilter and probably had 5 boxes full. Conor actually ended up locking himself in a closet while I was looking at all the material (arg!); that is the terrible twos for you! Picture the two of us having to take the door off the hinges to get my little explorer out. Look at this gorgeous pile of material I brought home: stripes, denim, floral and so many different textures!
I’m asking Santa for a sewing machine for Christmas to make more pillows and I thought sachets may be fun and easy. Do my crafty readers have any easy sewing ideas or sewing machine recommendations? If so, I’d love to hear from you!
I saw someone talking about these tea towels from Target this fall too and when I went to mine I couldn’t find them!! 🙁 Oh well, I DID find a placemat that turned into a nice pillow 🙂
Heidi, I’m really happy with how they came out. But I think the towels were quite popular. I luckily grabbed two as they were putting them out, but I think they sold out quite quickly. Oooh, placemats! What a good idea.
I saw someone talking about these tea towels from Target this fall too and when I went to mine I couldn’t find them!! 🙁 Oh well, I DID find a placemat that turned into a nice pillow 🙂
Heidi, I’m really happy with how they came out. But I think the towels were quite popular. I luckily grabbed two as they were putting them out, but I think they sold out quite quickly. Oooh, placemats! What a good idea.