How To Make A DIY Woven Pillow

I mentioned in one of my last post that I finished my first weaving project and promised I would share it with you guys. For my first weaving project, I decided to attempt to make a DIY woven pillow.

It’s finished and I got to say I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. So I wanted to show you guys how to make one yourself!

I only recently got into weaving but I have been sharing with you guys what I’ve been learning here on the blog.

Hoping that as I take you along my journey the things I share can be helpful for anyone else who has been wanting to get into weaving themselves.

How To Make A DIY Woven Pillow

Making a woven pillow is really no different than when starting any other weaving project.

In my last post How To Start Weaving for Beginners, I cover a lot of helpful tips for setting up and completing your first weave.

There are a lot of different types of weaving techniques that you can implement in your own pillow.

Since this was my first project I didn’t try anything too advanced.

I set up my DIY Frame Loom with a low-density weft.

If you don’t yet have a loom I recommend reading my post on how to make your own DIY lap loom. However, if you don’t want to go to the trouble of making one yourself here’s a few affordable options I found:

The Plain Weave

The majority of the project used the most basic weaving technique, the plain weave. All you have to do to complete this weave is start your weaving needle on the left side of your loom and weave over and under each weft.

When you reach the end your repeat this process but moving back towards the left.

The Pile Weave

After completing about five or so rows of a plain weave I then made my first pile weave.

This is somewhat similar to the plain weave but you’re going to wrap your yarn or whatever you choose to use for this weave around some sort of dowel or stick.

You’re only going to do this for the parts of the yarn that is woven over. This creates a raised effect to your weave.

You need to leave your dowel in your weave for several rows. After the first pile weave, I made about four or five plain weaves before starting the next pile weave.

I didn’t take the dowels out until I had at least four or five rows completed after the pile weave to ensure it was secure and that the pile weave wouldn’t alter once the dowel is removed.

An Important Note

Keep in mind I decided to make one large panel to create the pillow. Rather than weave two separate panels that would need to be attached later on.

In the next step below, when I say weave until the halfway point; I really am talking about the halfway point for the front portion of your pillow.

Another way to think of this would be about one-quarter of the way of the entire piece.

Creating The Inverse Triangle

If you decide to replicate my pillows design the majority of the pillow will consist of the plain weave.

You’re going to continue with your plain weave after you’ve completed all the pile weave rows until you hit about the halfway point of the height of your pillow.

You’ll notice the fringe is in a downward triangle design. To accomplish this you’ll need to make your plain weave do a sort of stair-stepping pattern on both sides.

Find the middle weft on your loom.

Starting on the left side, make two rows of plain weaves. Being sure to stop on the middle weft before when starting the second row.

For the third and fourth rows, you’ll skip the middle weft and instead only weave up to the second to the middle weft on the left.

You’ll repeat this process of skipping a weft every two rows until you hit the last wefts on your loom.

Very quickly you’ll start to see how the angled pattern is starting to take shape.

Do this exact same process with the right side of your loom to complete the inversed triangle pattern.

Adding The Fringe

Now you’ve made a path for your fringe, it’s time to add some fringe. I used another painter’s stick I’ve been using as my shuttle for the project to create my fringe.

I wrapped my yarn around the painter’s stick several times and when it was pretty full I cut through the middle of my yarn gathers.

Then I folded the gathers once more in half and cut again. I used about ten strands for each fringe bundle.

Though I feel fewer strands would have been better, maybe try using five instead. Depending on how much fringe you want

Starting again in the middle working up towards the left. Take your first bundle find the middle and lay it over the two middle wefts.

Take the ends and wrap them under, then pull them through the middle of the two wefts and tighten, creating your first fringe bundle.

Continue to do this following along with your stair-stepped plain weaves. Repeat for the right side.

Completing The Front of The Pillow

I found this next step the most difficult, because of the inverse triangle.To create the inverse triangle we separated the project in half.

However, now we need to make it all one weave so it flows together and doesn’t look choppy.

To do this you’re going to start in the middle again, at the tip of the triangle. Weave your first row using the two middle wefts. This should mean the first row goes from end to end.

You’ll continue to do this as you go up but instead of skipping wefts like we did to make the inverse triangle you are going to be adding wefts.

It should be about every two rows before adding a new weft but it’s not always exact. You’ll need to eyeball it making sure as you weave the rows are staying horizontal and not varying in height anywhere.

Continue your plain weave until you hit the top of your loom and you’ll have one whole woven piece that will very soon become your DIY woven pillow.

Finishing Your DIY Woven Pillow

Youll need to take your weave off of your loom and secure any loose yarns. I did this by tieing a double knot and tucking the tail into the bottom weaves.

To take your weave off the loom pull only a few wefts off at a time. Cut the middle where it was notched and tie the two ends together securely. Do this all the way across for the top and bottom.

Fold your woven pillow pattern in half horizontally right sides together and pin sides together all the way around.

Be sure to leave a portion unpinned. It needs to be large enough to pull your pillow through right side out. I left mine about four fingers wide.