For the last several years, I have branched out to decorating with other colors for Christmas. While I loved the decor with the other colors, I was kinda missing the traditional Christmas colors of red and green. So this year I decided to go back to those and add in a fun twist. Plaid! Of course, I had to make some fun DIY plaid Christmas pillows to coordinate with my theme.

I love anything plaid, but especially traditional tartan plaids. Maybe because it reminds me of my teenage years of wearing plaid flannels in the 90’s. Ha! I am really showing my age now! Plaid really is a timeless pattern and feels like it just fits into Christmas decor so well.

While looking around for some Christmas pillows, I came across some pillows from Pottery Barn (here, here, here and here) and instantly loved them! Instead of paying the hefty price tag for theirs, I knew that I could recreate them for a fraction of the price.

This tutorial will show you how to make the snowflake and Christmas tree pillows specifically. If you need to know how to make pillow covers in general, check out the tutorial I have for easy zippered pillow covers. That is the process I used to make all of these pillow covers.

We were lucky to be able to make use of my MIL’s embroidery machine to make the ‘merry’ and candy cane lumbar pillows! Unfortunately, I do not have a tutorial for those since you would need to own an embroidery machine to make them! But I still wanted to show them off since I think they turned out super cute and pretty close to the Pottery Barn versions! 🙂

Don’t want to read all the instructions? Here is a quick little video showing you how make the pillow covers. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading. 😉

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

For this project you will need:

• Solid and Plaid Fabric
• Fusible Webbing
• Cutting mat, rotary cutter and 24″ ruler – this is optional, you can just use scissors to cut your fabric but this makes cutting fabric so much easier!
• Sewing machine and coordinating thread
• Iron
• Pillow inserts – I use the Fdjrarar down pillow inserts from Ikea
• 14” zippers (if making a zippered pillow cover)
• Scissors & Pinking Shears

I found all my fabric at Hobby Lobby. The mostly white plaid fabric was in the regular fabric section but the red plaid was actually a tablecloth that I found in the Christmas section. Also, the green and black plaid was a cloth napkin in the Christmas section. With everything in the Christmas section 50% off, this is a great way to get a lot of fabric for a lower price! In fact I will be able to use this fabric for a lot more than just pillows.

DIY Christmas Tree Pillow

The Christmas tree pillow was the easier out of the two I will show you today, so we will start with that one. 🙂 These pillows were made using an applique method. If you can’t sew or really don’t want to, these pillows could be made leaving out that step. However, I like the finished detail the sewing gives to the pillow and I feel like it secures the plaid fabric down a bit more.

Look online to find Christmas tree clip art. I wanted mine to be a little more “fat”, so I looked for a bigger tree. There are so many to choose from so just choose one to your liking. Just copy and paste the image into a Word document file. The finished size of my pillow is about 19×19″ and I wanted the tree to fill up a majority of the front of the pillow. In order to print off a large enough tree, I enlarged the image so about 2/3 of it fit on one sheet of card stock. I had to print off two pages, one of the top and one of the bottom of the tree. Then I just overlapped the tree image and taped them together. Next, cut out the tree image to use as your template.

As you can see, a portion of the tree is missing on one side, but that is not a problem. Since the image is symmetrical, you can flip it over and trace the branches on the missing side. Trace the tree onto the paper backing side of the fusible webbing.

Cut loosely around the tree (do not cut directly on the line) and iron this down to your plaid fabric. Make sure you iron it onto the “wrong” side of the fabric if there is an under side. Since this is a plaid pattern with lines, I tried to make sure my lines were going straight and not curving at all.

Now cut directly on the outline of the tree. Remove the paper backing from the fusible webbing and place the tree onto one of your white fabric panels for your pillow. Use a measuring tape to make sure the tree is centered. Iron the tree down by repeatedly lifting and pressing straight down with the iron. Don’t move the iron side to side like when you are ironing a shirt. You take the risk of moving the tree that way. Make sure to get all the edges ironed down.

After the tree is ironed to the panel, sew it down. I use a blanket stitch and follow along the outline of the tree. Check out the video in this post to see how to sew around the curves.

The blanket stitch gives a nice decorative finish to the tree. It also helps to secure the tree down to the pillow. Now all you have to do is sew your panels together to finish the pillow cover.

This is such a simple pillow to make and so cute! What do you think? The green and black plaid fabric was perfect for the tree.

DIY Snowflake Pillow

This pillow was made with the same process so I will not make you sit through the same explanation twice. 😉 I wanted it to resemble this Pottery Barn snowflake pillow so I tried to find a snowflake image like that pillow. I found an image that was close but did not have the rounded tips like the PB one. So I ended up drawing some rounded tips on the ends to make it look closer to the pillow I was emulating.

Again, I had to print off and tape together two pieces of cardstock to get the size of template that I wanted.

The PB pillow also has some extra adornments like french knots, trim and extra stitching. I still may end up adding these in the future because I think they look really cute! If I end up adding them I will definitely take a picture and show you. When placing the snowflake, I wanted the white stripe to go through the middle so I “fussy cut” the fabric. This uses more fabric but it gives you a more pleasing and symmetrical outcome. You know me, I love symmetry! 🙂

Here are some detail pictures of the stitching.

Pillows are such an simple project to DIY and they are a fun way to easily change up your decor. Do you make your own pillow covers yet? If not, you should try it! I have to admit I have a pretty hefty collection of pillow covers but it is so nice when I want to change up the decor for the holidays. They are like Pringles… once you pop, you can’t stop! 😉