DIY No Sew Union Jack Pillow....

I’ve always loved the look of  Union Jack Pillows. There are so many ways to personalize them to fit your own decor style that I thought I’d give it a try. Time being of the essence these days, I decided to take a shortcut and use a ready-made pillow that I already had on hand.

~*~Materials~*~

Ready-made pillow

Fabric: I used bleached canvas dropcloth

(for a tutorial on how to bleach and soften drop cloth, go HERE)

Scissors

Measuring tape/ruler

Fabric Glue or a Hot Glue Gun

~*~BEFORE~*~

 First, I measured the pillow from corner-to-corner and added  3” to that measurement.  I then cut a 2” wide strip of bleached drop cloth (I like to pull a few rows of thread in the dropcloth to “fray” the edges a bit).  I centered my cloth strip on the pillow and, using a hot glue gun (or fabric glue), glued it to the pillow.  

You will have some overlap at each end that looks like this.....

...I then simply cut the overlap at right angles to match the corner of the pillow and glued it down... 

Repeat the above steps to adhere a second strip of dropcloth to form a “criss cross” on your pillow.... 

Next, I measured the length of my pillow and cut a 3” wide strip of cloth to that exact measurement. Because my pillow has fringe on these ends, I needed my strip to end where the fringe begins. If your pillow does not have an existing trim, then you will need to add a few inches to your measured length to overlap on the back of the pillow. Again, center your strip on the pillow and glue from end-to-end....

Measure the width of your pillow and add a few inches to this measurement to, again, overlap it on the back of the pillow....(I used a 3” wide strip)....

When I was finished, my pillow looked like this...but I thought it needed something “more”.

 These are the sheers that hang in my sunroom. They were too long so I had to cut a good  12” off of them before hemming them. 

I used the original hem of the curtain and cut a strip long enough to cover the width of my pillow and... 

... used the original "side" hem of the curtain to cut a strip long enough to cover the length of my pillow. 

I glued them on as I did the dropcloth ....   

 VOILA!

Why not plug in your gluegun, grab an old pillow and give it “a little bit of some English?” 

It’ll be the bees knees mates.